China will unveil a national plan next week to combat climate change, officials of the country's top economic planner said yesterday.

As part of the government's efforts to meet the challenge of global warming, the national program will encourage energy conservation and promote the use of new technology to trap greenhouse gases, a National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) official told the international media in Beijing.

Most of the plan, to be unveiled by the NDRC, will focus on goals that have to be achieved by 2010. Among the policies will be planting of more saplings to increase forest cover, the official said.

Climate change is high on the agenda of the G8 annual summit, to be held in Germany next week. The summit agenda also includes the Korean Peninsula and Iranian nuclear issues and the Darfur question in Sudan.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country assumes the presidency of the summit this year, hopes the G8 summit would pave the way for an extension of the UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming by agreeing on concrete steps to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

But the US and some developing countries are opposed to mandatory caps.

China insists developed countries should take the lead in reducing gas emissions and that resolving this issue needs the cooperation of all countries based on their respective responsibilities, capacities and levels of economic development.

"A mandatory quota for China now will not be fair, therefore it cannot accept it," another Chinese official told the international media.

President Hu Jintao will attend the outreach session of the G8 summit on the invitation of Merkel, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular news briefing yesterday.

The heads of G8 members - the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia - and leaders of five developing countries, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, will also attend the meeting.

The meeting "will help strengthen North-South dialogue and cooperation, and is conducive to pushing for the solution of global problems", Hu told Merkel over the telephone yesterday.

China will work, in the spirit of equal partnership, with leaders of Germany and other countries attending the summit for an in-depth exchange of views on prominent global issues and help the dialogue to achieve a positive outcome, Hu said.

Chinese analysts said Hu would use the dialogue between leaders of "the rich club" and the developing countries to let Beijing's position on important global issues, including global warming, be known to the world.

China should let the world know about its efforts to cut gas emissions to counter some developed countries' unfair criticism, said Wu Miaofa, a researcher with the China Institute of the International Studies.

(China Daily 06/01/2007 page2)