SYDNEY, Australia - President Bush and Chinese President Hu Jintao, leaders of two of the world's worst polluting nations, called Thursday for greater international cooperation in tackling climate change without stifling economic growth.
Bush also was to push for expanded trade with Pacific Rim nations and appeal for help in getting stalled global trade talks going again. He was laying out his views on the environment, energy security and the economic costs of terrorism in a speech to business leaders from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Climate change was high on the agenda of the U.S. and Chinese presidents in a 90-minute meeting and aides said it would be an important aspect of Bush's speech. The president also was to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, among heads of state here for the annual meeting of the 21-nation economic gathering.
Bush has been criticized by environmentalists and others for his opposition to the 1997 Kyoto treaty against global warming, and China has long been slammed for the huge amounts of greenhouse gases its power plants and industries pump into the atmosphere. The fact that neither China nor India, another major global polluter, were covered by Kyoto was one reason Bush has opposed it.
But both leaders seemed to be generally in agreement on the subject.
"We believe that the issue of climate change bears on the welfare of the whole humanity and sustainable development of the whole world," Hu told reporters after his meeting with Bush. "And this issue should be appropriately tackled through stronger international cooperation."
Climate control has been designated a top agenda item for this year's APEC meeting.
"We talked about climate change and our desire to work together on climate change," Bush said.
Aides said the president would give a more detailed account of his climate change proposals in his speech to APEC business leaders.
One of them is a proposal to eliminate tariffs on environmental and clean-energy technologies. In his talks with Hu, Bush invited the Chinese leader to consider doing the same, said Dan Price, a presidential economic adviser on the National Security Council.
"President Bush raised the issue of climate change, and both sides welcomed the attention of APEC to climate, and they confirmed the importance of addressing this pressing problem cooperatively and responsibly, and in a manner that did not stall or stunt economic growth," Price said.
Hu had suggested the United Nations should be the one to spearhead climate control efforts. Price said that wasn't necessarily contradictory with the Bush approach.
The U.S. and Chinese leaders also talked about North Korea, Iran and Chinese product safety. Hu "was quite articulate about product safety, and I appreciated his comments," Bush said. White House aides later said Hu expressed a willingness to step up Chinese efforts to ensure the safety of products and to crack down on efforts to ship tainted foods.
Bush said he accepted Hu's invitation to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics. And the two leaders talked about establishing a "hot line" like the longtime one between Washington and Moscow to alert each other to possible military situations that might seem threatening or be ambiguous.
Both leaders expressed opposition to efforts within Taiwan to seek U.N. membership. The U.S. has opposed steps toward independence for the self-governing island, which Beijing considers a renegade province, preferring to adhere to its "One China" policy even as it continues to sell military supplies to Taiwan.
Bush has called for greater reliance on technology to combat global warming. Although early in his first term, he had insisted that the science of what causes global warming was not yet settled, more recently he has been less questioning of a link between human activity and higher global temperatures, and supportive of programs to tackle the problem.
Earlier this week, Bush said it was an "urban legend that is preposterous" for critics to suggest that his opposition to the Kyoto treaty showed a lack of environmental awareness or concern about climate change.
Bush was also having lunch with South East Asian leaders and meeting with South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Putin.
In his speech, the president was also issuing an appeal to Asia-Pacific business leaders for their help in getting stalled global trade liberalization talks restarted.
The trade talks known as the Doha round have stumbled since their inception in Qatar's capital in 2001, largely because of wrangling between rich and poor countries over eliminating barriers to farm trade and, more recently, manufacturing trade.
