LONDON — As world leaders prepared for a major summit, President Bush said Monday that he would not substantially change his stance on global warming to reward British Prime Minister Tony Blair for his support of the war in Iraq.
"I really don't view our relationship as one of quid pro quo," Bush said. "Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did."
Reiterating his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol that mandates targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Bush told Britain's ITV1 channel that he would reject any measures that "look like Kyoto." The United States is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but Bush has rejected the treaty because its provisions, he said, would "wreck the U.S. economy."
Blair is the host of the Group of 8 summit that begins Wednesday in Gleneagles, Scotland, and he has made the issues of climate change and increasing assistance to Africa the top priorities of the meeting.
The annual gathering attracts protesters denouncing globalization and capitalism, and in recent years, the Iraq war. Demonstrators clashed with police Monday on the streets of Edinburgh, about 40 miles south of the exclusive golf resort where Bush and Blair and the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia will meet. Thousands of police were being deployed in the area to cope with an expected onslaught of demonstrators.
In the days leading to the summit, aides to Bush have sought to dispel his international image as a cowboy. His administration has announced plans to double development aid to Africa by 2010, although not in the way Blair and other G-8 leaders had proposed.
Although he rejected any "quid pro quo" on climate change, Bush acknowledged that human activity was at least partly responsible for the apparent warming of the planet in recent years.
And he said that there might be other compromises the United States and other nations could make to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases being produced.
In the past, European leaders have been frustrated that U.S. officials have disputed scientific evidence of accelerated warming and questioned whether the phenomenon posed a real threat to the planet.
Asked in the interview whether climate change was "man-made," Bush replied, "To a certain extent it is, obviously."
