China, US 'crucial for climate pact'

The Swedish ambassador to China, Mikael Lindstrom said Sweden, which will take over the half-year rotating EU presidency from the Czech Republic in July, hopes the Copenhagen conference in December will achieve a new "regime" to address global warming.

Lindstrom told China Daily that combating climate change will be one of his country's priorities during its presidency.

"Copenhagen is an extremely important occasion for the world to find ways to tackle the causes of climate change," he said.

"As for the new regime, if I can call it the 'Copenhagen regime', the US should be there and China should be there," he said, alluding to the Kyoto Protocol, which Washington failed to sign.

The Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012 and the Copenhagen conference will allow the world to find a new set of targets.

US climate change envoy Todd Stern is in Beijing this week, talking to China about the role the two countries might play.

Stern said last week he envisioned a bilateral partnership with China to address clean energy and global warming.

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry also recently met Chinese leaders and reached a consensus that the countries will work on clean energy and climate change.

But Zhang Haibin, an expert on environmental politics at Peking University, told reporters: "Reaching an agreement at Copenhagen should be relatively easy, because nobody wants outright failure. But reaching an effective agreement will be more difficult."