Climate cooperation to help ties, Hu tells Obama

BEIJING, Oct 21 - Chinese President Hu Jintao has told his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama that closer cooperation on climate change could help improve overall ties between the world's top two greenhouse gas polluters.

Hu also said he was optimistic about U.N.-led talks on a new global framework to tackle climate change even though the latest round of negotiations ran into trouble.

"Developing cooperation between the two sides on climate change issues would not only benefit the international community in its efforts to tackle climate change, but also have great significance for promoting the development of China-U.S. ties," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Hu as saying.

The two leaders spoke via telephone on Wednesday morning Beijing time.

Hu added that "the two sides face common challenges in the field of climate change, and shared common interests".

Hu and Obama are due to meet in less than a month, when the American makes his first Presidential visit to China.

Officials have long touted climate change as an area where both sides have much to gain from working together, and much to lose if they cannot reach a deal to limit the production of gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, that scientists say are warming the atmosphere.

Chinese scientists say higher global temperatures will bring problems including increased flooding in the south, droughts in the north and smaller harvests.

But despite growing concern among politicians and the public of many countries, U.N. climate talks on expanding the fight against global warming have largely stalled, making the outcome of a major climate summit in Copenhagen in December uncertain.

The last round of climate talks in Bangkok from Sept 28 to Oct 9 resulted in narrowing the options in draft text of a likely agreement but failed to break the deadlock on key areas.

With less than 50 days to the Copenhagen meeting, negotiators face serious obstacles to getting the United States and large developing nations to sign up to a deal that would lead to big reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Hu said China was still optimistic about the summit.

"Although recent talks (showed) there are still many problems that still need resolving, if all parties can join hands and work hard, with a focus on implementing the basic principles of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, we can lock in gains already achieved in the negotiation of the Bali Roadmap," Xinhua said.

He was referring to an action plan agreed at U.N. climate talks in Dec 2007 that launched two years of negotiations to try to finalise a broader framework to expand or replace the Kyoto Protocol. That process is meant to conclude in Copenhagen.

The report also quoted Obama saying that with the Copenhagen meeting just weeks away, the United States wanted to work with all sides to push for success at the talks.