ROME, July 6 (Reuters) - G8 host Italy hopes that China and India will agree on an "extremely ambitious" goal of halving the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at this week's summit, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in a newspaper interview. He told Il Messagero on Monday that this would be the focus of the second day of the summit on Thursday, dominated by a meeting of the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) chaired by U.S. President Barack Obama and Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. "The slogan is minus 50 in 2050: if we agree this with China, India, (South) Korea and the Africa and Latin American countries, it will be an extremely ambitious goal," said the Italian minister. The MEF nations, which account for about 80 percent of total emissions, have called a last-minute ministerial meeting in Rome on Tuesday to try to narrow the gap between rich nations and developing ones, like India, on long-term environment goals. Differences persist over what goal should be set for cuts in emissions and what should be the base year for comparison. However, if the deal outlined by Frattini did come out of the summit in the Italian mountain town of L'Aquila, it would mean significant progress towards a new U.N. pact on carbon emissions to be signed in Copenhagen in December. Last year, the Group of Eight industrialised nations -- the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Canada, Italy and Russia -- agreed at a Japan summit to a "vision" of halving greenhouse gases by 2050 to help avert ever more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. But developing countries including China, India and Brazil did not sign up for that, arguing that rich nations should first set themselves a goal of cutting emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Frattini also said the summit would produce some commitment on limiting the increase in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels to no more than 2 degrees celsius. Washington has previously resisted endorsing such a goal, but one European official said last week that President Obama, whose own climate change bill has made progress in Congress, might now be on board for it. (Writing by Stephen Brown; Editing by Jason Neely)
A woman jumps out of a bus as demonstrators break the bus windows in Urumqi, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, China July 6, 2009. China calls ethnic unrest that killed 140 in China's ...
