Jennifer Quinn
Associated Press Writer

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday that the Group of Eight has agreed on a plan calling for "substantial cuts" in the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

The goal is to agree to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050, Merkel said, hailing the decision as a "huge success." She said it came after many rounds of talks and negotiations on climate change.

But the declaration falls short of an ironclad commitment, saying only that the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitters should "seriously consider" following the European Union, Canada and Japan in seeking to halve their output by 2050.

Merkel, who has made the issue the centerpiece of her leadership of this year's G-8, had lobbied fellow leaders on the matter since they began arriving in this Baltic Sea resort for their yearly summit.

"No one can escape this political declaration. It is an enormous step forward," she told reporters.

Asked if there was "wiggle room" in the declaration, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said there will be no agreement "until there's an agreement that has America and China in it.

"However, there is now a process to lead to that agreement and at its heart is a commitment to a substantial cut. What does substantial mean? That serious consideration is given to the halving of emissions by 2050," he said.

Still, Blair called the deal "a major, major step forward."

Merkel has long been calling for setting specific targets for reducing the carbon emissions believed to cause global warming, including a "two-degree" target under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase by no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before being brought back down.

Experts have said that would require a global reduction in emissions of 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

The statement also does not commit to her "two-degree" goal.

Merkel wanted binding reductions; President Bush opposed them. He instead had proposed having the top 15 polluters meet and set a long-term goal, but decide for themselves how much to do toward meeting it.

Bush's national security adviser, Steve Hadley, said the ideas in the G-8 declaration are in the president's proposal.

"The president made clear last week that we accepted the principle of a long-term goal," Hadley said during a telephone briefing with reporters. "I think it's very consistent with some ideas the president had last week."

Merkel, host of this year's meeting of the world's eight major industrialized countries, said the "toughest point was the halving of emissions ... that was the hardest step." But she said: "We agreed that we need reduction goals - and obligatory reduction goals."

All parties agreed the process should take place within the U.N. framework and will begin with a meeting of environment ministers at a U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

The conference will try to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. That treaty set binding targets for industrial countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases believed to cause global warming. The U.S. signed the treaty but did not ratify it because China and India were not included.

Blair was saying goodbye to Bush and the other G-8 leaders in this seaside city in northern Germany. Besides global warming, the leaders will discuss edgy relations with Russia and Moscow's opposition to Western efforts to secure independence for Serbia's Kosovo province, the crisis in Darfur, poverty aid to Africa, the Middle East and trade talks.

North Korea is likely to be another topic of discussion. The reclusive communist regime on Thursday fired short-range missiles off its western coast in an apparent test, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry.

The United States immediately denounced the launch, saying such activity was "not constructive" in the midst of a deadlock in international negotiations over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

Merkel chaired a working session Thursday, with Blair to her left and Bush next to him. Also at the table were Russia's Vladimir Putin, Italy's Romano Prodi, Canada's Stephen Harper, France's Nicolas Sarkozy, Japan's Shinzo Abe and Jose Manuel Barroso of the European Commission.

Afterward, Bush and Putin met privately after days of Cold War-style sparring over U.S. plans to base a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, essentially in Russia's back yard.

Putin, bitterly opposed to putting such a system in Europe, told Bush that Russia would drop its objections and not seek to retrain its missiles on Europe if the shield were installed in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic bordering the Caspian Sea.

Bush's national security adviser, Steve Hadley, called it an "interesting proposal."

Anti-poverty groups, meanwhile, hope the leaders will recommit to promises made during their summit two years ago in Gleneagles, Scotland, to increase international aid to Africa and other poorer countries.

This year's gathering is being held under tight security, with Heiligendamm sealed off by a seven-mile, razor wire-topped fence. Thousands of police have been deployed across the northern German region.

Protests continued Thursday for a second day, as demonstrators continued to block roads to Heiligendamm and police again resorted to firing water cannons to scatter them.

Offshore, Greenpeace environmental activists led police on a boat chase, with one boatload briefly spilling its contents into the Baltic.

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Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven and Claudia Kemmer in Heiligendamm, David Rising in Hinter Bollhagen and Vanessa Gera in Bad Doberan contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

G-8 Summit: http://www.g-8.de