USA: EU-U.S. summit in Washington calls for 'urgent' climate action, addresses the U.S. crisis with Russia and discusses the Transatlantic Economic Partnership

The European Union and the United States agreed on Monday (April 30) that global warming is an "urgent" priority, and President George W. Bush conceded he must work to convince Russia of the need for a missile shield in Europe. The U.S. president met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the president of the European Comission Jose Manuel Barroso in the White House against a backdrop of Russian criticism of U.S. plans to deploy a missile shield in Eastern Europe and a vow from Russian President Vladimir Putin to take "appropriate measures" to counter the system. Bush said Merkel had previously expressed to him German and European concerns about the missile shield and that he should explain what he envisions to Putin. As a result, Bush said he sent U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Moscow last week to meet Putin to offer Russia the opportunity to be included in a shield that Washington sees aimed at countering the threat of terrorist attack and not a resurrection of the Cold War. "Our intention of course is to have a defense system that prevents rogue regimes from holding western Europe and/or America to hostage. Evidently the Russians view it differently. So upon the advice from the chancellor I asked Secretary Gates to go to Moscow, where he had a very constructive meeting with President Putin. I called President Putin asked him to see Secretary Gates. Our intention is to say to Russia that this system is something you ought to think about participating in," Bush said. At the White House summit, Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso also said they were firmly dedicated to reaching agreement on a global trade pact under the often-stalled Doha round of talks. "The Doha round is mainly about reducing tariffs and the Transatlantic Economic Partnership has to do more with standards and nothing to do with actual tariffs. What we are after is to see to it that we try for convergence in many many areas where we do not have mutual recognition of standards or areas where we can actually harmonize those standards and therefore reduce costs by millions for example in drug testing, crash testing for automobiles," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bush, who critics charged was late to recognize climate change as a problem, made clear he felt any agreement between the United States and Europe would have a limited impact as long as developing countries like China are not included. "I think that each country needs to recognize that we need to reduce green house gases and deal obviously with their own internal politics to come up with an effective strategy that hopefully when added together leads to a real reduction. Finally, you've got to recognize that in order to achieve progress on green house gases we've got to make sure that developing nations which are significant emitters are part of the process. As I reminded the people around the conference table today, the United States could shut down our economy and emit no green house gases and all it would take is for China about 18 months to produce as much as we had been producing, to make up the difference about what we had reduced our green house gases to. So this is a very important issue. It has global consequences. The good news ia that we recognize there is a problem. The good news is we recognize that technology is going to lead to solutions and we are willing to share the technologies and we all recognize that we got to deal with the developing world, particularly China and India," Bush said. But Merkel retorted that the developed world must lead the effort to reduce carbon emissions. It was Merkel's first visit to Washington since she took over the rotating EU presidency, and she pushed global climate change in hopes of making it a big part of the agenda at a Group of Eight summit she is hosting in Germany in June. At the joint news conference in the Rose Garden, the European side said it felt progress was made on the issue, despite an absence of concrete steps the EU and the United States can take together to address the problem. "I really believe that there was progress and very concrete progress, for instance standards for biofuels. Its good. The idea to have a conference on renewables between the European Union and the United States, it would be next year here in Washington. And some concrete, its very detailed in our document, some concrete mechanisms in terms of energy efficiency. So I really believe that by linking those different files, climate protection, energy security, we can really achieve a very important goal of having a sustainable development which is friendly to our environment," said Barroso "My position is that he ought to stay. He ought to be given a fair hearing and I appreciate the fact that he has helped the World Bank recognize that eradication of world poverty is an important priority for the bank." U.S. President George W. Bush reiterated his support for World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz when asked whether he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had discussed the issue. "My position is that he ought to stay. He ought to be given a fair hearing and I appreciate the fact that he has helped the World Bank recognize that eradication of world poverty is an important priority for the bank," Bush said. The controversy has prompted calls by bank staff for Wolfowitz's resignation. Staff who implement the bank's strategy for good governance and against corruption last week complained their work had been undermined by the crisis.

ITN Source | May 1, 2007

Tags:. .controversy. .joint. .putin. .renewables. .reminded