Europeans seek G8 pledge to halve greenhouse gas

By Daniel Flynn

ROME (Reuters) - Italy, France and Britain called on Monday for major developing economies like China and India to sign up for a goal of halving the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at this week's expanded G8 summit in Italy.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the "extremely ambitious" goal would be the focus of the second day of the summit on Thursday, when U.S. President Barack Obama will chair a meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF).

The MEF, which groups rich and poor countries accounting for about 80 percent of the world's carbon emissions, hopes to make progress toward a new U.N. climate change pact, due to be signed by 190 nations gathering in Copenhagen in December.

"The slogan is minus 50 in 2050: if we agree this with China, India, (South) Korea and the African and Latin American countries, it will be an extremely ambitious goal," Frattini said in an interview published in the Il Messaggero newspaper.

The call was echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meeting for a bilateral summit in the lakeside town of Evian in the French Alps.

In a tough joint statement, the two countries said the G8 meeting planned at L'Aquila in central Italy would "test our determination to grasp the scale of the changes needed to address the challenge of global warming."

France and Britain called on developing countries to sign up to the target of cutting global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, from 1990 levels. The base year for carbon cuts is a moot point, with some rich nations like Japan and the United States seeking a more recent base year which would make cuts less onerous.

France and Britain, however, called on industrial countries to go even further and target an 80 percent reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.