Blair tries one last time to persuade Bush on CO2

Key quote

"You could have a situation where this is agreed at the G8 - which is my preference - or you could see how it is agreed in principle, but you have to work out the details later. The important thing is that we get an agreement." - TONY BLAIR

Story in full TONY Blair will today make his last attempt to persuade George Bush to accept binding targets to cut American carbon emissions, even after the United States president appeared to reject the plan again yesterday.

The meeting at the Group of Eight summit in Germany at 6:30am today may be Mr Blair's last private talk with Mr Bush before he leaves Downing Street this month.

The Prime Minister is backing a German proposal for the eight industrialised nations to commit to halving carbon emissions by 2050, and to try to hold increases in average global temperatures to two degrees.

In an interview before leaving London for the summit in Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast, Mr Blair said he was confident of persuading Mr Bush to accept emissions cuts.

"We need a global agreement that includes all the main players, including China and America, and at the heart of that there has to be a global target for a substantial cut in emissions. I believe it is possible," he said.

"You could have a situation where this is agreed at the G8 - which is my preference - or you could see how it is agreed in principle, but you have to work out the details later. The important thing is that we get an agreement."

But within hours of Mr Blair's confident predictions, one of Mr Bush's team made clear that the US has no intention of signing up to a carbon-cutting deal.

Unless that position changes dramatically, the summit will end tomorrow without a significant climate change deal.

• Mr Blair will today warn Vladimir Putin that his increasingly hostile rhetoric towards the West is jeopardising investment in Russia.

The Prime Minister will hold a private meeting with the Russian president, who this week threatened to train nuclear missiles on European targets in protest against a US plan to put anti-missile batteries in eastern Europe.

"We want good relations with Russia, but that can only be done on ... shared principles and shared values," Mr Blair told MPs. "The consequence if there aren't ... is that people in Europe will want to minimise the business they do with Russia."

THOUSANDS OF PROTESTERS CUT OFF SUMMIT ZONE

THE G8 summit is taking place amid what has become routine heavy security, aimed at keeping thousands of anti-globalisation demonstrators away from the meeting.

But the Heiligendamm site was effectively cut off by protesters who stormed police lines through the "forbidden zone" to reach the 8ft-high steel fence built to protect world leaders.

The authorities had to resort to ferrying in hotel workers, conference officials, diplomats and journalists by sea as pitched battles were fought in several places along the eight-mile barrier.

Stones were rained on police, who responded with tear gas, water cannon and baton charges.

Police suffered at least eight casualties, who were taken out of the zone by ambulance to local hospitals.

The organisation of the demonstrators caught the authorities by surprise. Convoys of hundreds of police vehicles and at least ten personnel helicopters were used to ferry thousands of reinforcements into the flashpoint areas as all land routes were impassable by shortly after midday.

Police were forced to shut down two checkpoints on the way to the fence as 6,000 protesters stormed through, cutting off Heiligendamm by land.