The Bush administration, which is pushing alternatives to the Kyoto treaty on global warming, unveiled a six-nation pact on Wednesday that promotes the use of technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The deal between the United States, Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea will build on existing bilateral agreements on technology sharing. It includes no Kyoto-style caps on emissions.
President Bush said in a statement the Asia-Pacific partnership, which will be formally introduced in the Laotion capital Vientiane, would address global warming while promoting economic development.
But environmentalists criticized it as an attempt by Washington to create a distraction ahead of U.N. talks in November in Montreal that will focus on how to widen Kyoto to include developing nations after 2012.
The approach of looking to technology for solutions to global warming was emphasized by Bush at the Group of Eight summit in Scotland when he called for a "post-Kyoto era."
The United States, which creates the biggest share of greenhouse emissions, and Australia are the only developed nations outside Kyoto. But Japan, China, India and South Korea have ratified Kyoto, which demands cuts in greenhouse emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
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