HEILIGENDAMM (Germany), June 7: World leaders agreed on Thursday to pursue substantial but unspecified cuts in greenhouse gases and work with the United Nations to clinch a new deal to fight global warming by 2009.

The agreement, sealed at the G-8 summit on the Baltic coast, binds the world’s largest polluter, the United States, more closely into international efforts to curb the gases scientists say are causing dangerous changes to world weather patterns.

But it does not commit the club of industrialised nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- to the firm emissions reduction targets that the summit host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had wanted.

US President Bush has refused to sign up to numerical targets before rising powers like China and India make similar pledges. Convincing them to join the UN process will be crucial to reversing a rise in global temperatures.

Mr Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin met face-to-face in Heiligendamm for the first time since an ugly diplomatic row erupted over US plans to put parts of a missile shield in central Europe.

At the meeting, Mr Putin appeared to catch Mr Bush off guard with a new proposal that Washington and Moscow jointly use a radar system in Azerbaijan as an alternative to the disputed US plan to base parts of a shield in the Czech Republic and Poland.

On global warming, the G-8 agreed that `resolute and concerted international action’ was urgently needed, vowing to stem a rise in greenhouse gases, followed by ‘substantial’ reductions.—Reuters