"There will be no comprehensive global warming legislation coming out of the United States, whoever you have as president from whatever party, that does not include limits or a programme for China, India and the rest of the developing world."

He cast doubt on whether the 27-nation EU would be able to achieve ambitious emissions reductions targets it adopted last month and said the US approach of focusing on technological solutions to climate change was just as valid.

"I don't think we need to take a back seat to anybody in terms of what we are doing now and what we intend to achieve in the future," Gray said.

The EU agreed in March to cut emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide by at least 20 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels, and to go down by 30 percent if other industrialised and emerging nations followed suit.

Pressed to say how President George W. Bush would respond to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's challenge to join the EU in slashing emissions, Gray pointed instead to what the United States was already doing on its own.

CENTREPIECE

He said the US record on reducing emissions compared well with Europe's in this decade and Bush had just set an ambitious hard target of reducing gasoline use by 20 percent in 10 years.

In addition, the United States had invested some US$30 billion in climate technologies such as carbon capture and storage -- to make coal-fired power plants less polluting -- and on a second generation of biofuels produced from crops.

Merkel has vowed to make the fight against global warming the centrepiece of a summit of the Group of Eight major industrialised powers she will host in June. Germany currently holds the rotating presidencies of both the G8 and the EU.

Efforts to launch negotiations to extend the Kyoto agreement on climate change beyond 2012 have floundered as nations resist committing to targets for cutting greenhouse gases.

The United States accounts for nearly a quarter of all carbon emissions, but experts say it could be overtaken by China and its rapidly growing economy within the year.

Earlier this month EU environment chief Stavros Dimas accused Washington and Australia of hampering talks to extend Kyoto. Bush pulled out of the pact in 2001, arguing it would hurt the US economy and unfairly excluded developing nations.