G8 climate draft vague on medium-term targets: report

TOKYO (Reuters) - A draft of the climate statement to be adopted by the leaders of the Group of Eight wealthy nations next week includes plans for each member to set medium-term targets for greenhouse emissions, but does not specify what they should be, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

The leaders are being asked to agree at their summit in Japan to set targets for some time between 2020 and 2030, according to a draft declaration obtained by the Yomiuri Shimbun, and reported in its English-language edition.

The eight countries -- the United States, Canada, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy as well as Japan -- agreed last year to seriously consider a global goal of cutting emissions by 50 percent by 2050.

Japan and Europe want to upgrade that to an agreement on the long-term target at this year's summit.

But the question of interim targets has been harder to agree, with the United States and Japan saying G8 efforts will be meaningless if the climate change framework does not include major developing countries such as China and India.

(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Rodney Joyce)