The United States will call at the upcoming G8 summit for a new accord on climate change that binds only the countries that contribute most to the phenomenon, the German press said yesterday.

Washington wants the new pact on the environment to be concluded by 2009, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported, citing a US text to be tabled at the June 6-8 summit.

"We are committed to finding an agreement on a framework for a new accord by the end of 2008," it quoted the document as saying.

The US proposal risks worsening a row with Germany, the current G8 president, which is seeking a strong resolution on fighting climate change at the summit and wants to bring as many nations as possible to the table.

Greenpeace spokesman Joerg Feddern criticised the US proposal as an attempt to undermine the United Nations' Kyoto process with its mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.

"This is fatal for climate protection," Feddern told AFP.

Under the Kyoto Procotol, 35 industrialised nations that have signed and ratified the pact are required to make targeted cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2).

The United States, the world's number one emitter of greenhouse gases, has refused ratify the protocol and abide by the Kyoto process.

China and India's status as developing nations exempts them from mandatory targets on greenhouse gas output, though they are fast becoming big emitters of greenhouse gases as they burn oil, gas and coal to power their economies.

The US administration cited this as a reason for not ratifying the protocol, which runs until 2012.

This week China and India both signalled that they were not ready to accept binding targets on cutting emissions in the post-Kyoto era either.

UN negotiations on a new protocol on climate change will begin in earnest at a conference in Bali in December.

Washington strongly objects to a draft declaration on climate change that Chancellor Angela Merkel wants world leaders to adopt at next week's Group of Eight summit in Heiligendamm in northern Germany next week.

The text calls for a commitment to cutting global greenhouse gas emissions to 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 and limiting the worldwide temperature rise this century to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).