Blair's summit rebuff to Bush

Tony Blair last night launched an unexpected broadside against George Bush over climate change and said the leader of the world's most polluting nation must be persuaded to change his ways.
In a speech in Maputo, Mozambique, delivered 12 hours before arriving in Johannesburg for the earth summit, Mr Blair made combating climate change his major theme and reiterated his support for the Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, a course Mr Bush has rejected.

This was a calculated rebuff to the American president, who, having repudiated the Kyoto agreement, has instructed his team at the earth summit to remove all mention of it from the final 30,000-word "plan of action" being negotiated there.

Mr Blair, aware of the US pressure to "lose Kyoto", decided to embarrass Mr Bush by emphasising its importance.

But what makes it the more surprising is that his aides appeared to be emphasising the split with Washington. Last night the strategy was being seen as a clear attempt to demonstrate to a home audience that Britain is not slavishly loyal to the United States.

While Britain may be maintaining its controversial "shoulder to shoulder" position over the possibility of military action against Saddam Hussein, Downing Street will hope Mr Blair's tough criticism over Kyoto will show he is not cowed by Washington.

Mr Blair also announced that the UK would back potentially ground-breaking technologies to show how business could not just survive but prosper on the back of a sound environmental policy - something Mr Bush and his backers in the fossil fuel lobby claim is not possible.