LONDON, July 4: President George Bush has told Britain’s Tony Blair to expect no favours at this week’s Group of Eight summit in return for backing the invasion of Iraq as a deal on climate change looked set to offer little concrete action. Prime Minister Blair has made tackling global warming and relieving African poverty the twin goals of his year-long presidency of the G8. He will host his fellow leaders at the Gleneagles hotel in Scotland from Wednesday to Friday.

“I really don’t view our relationship as one of quid pro quo,” Mr Bush told Britain’s ITV1 television in an interview. “Tony Blair made decisions on what he thought was best for keeping the peace and winning the war on terror, as I did.

“So I go to the G8 not really trying to make him look bad or good, but ... with an agenda that I think is best for our country.”

Reports that a last-ditch round of negotiations by G8 officials over the weekend would result in an accord going some way to recognizing the science behind global warming were bolstered by French President Jacques Chirac, who said on Sunday the G8 leaders were ‘heading towards an agreement’.

But in the interview, Mr Bush was cautious, and environmental experts said rather than risk an open rift, the eight leading nations had decided on an accord offering the barest minimum on planetary warming.

“If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is ‘no’. The Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy,” Mr Bush said in the interview, which was recorded on Wednesday.

“I think you can grow your economy and at the same time do a better job of harnessing greenhouse gases. That’s exactly what I intend to talk to our partners about,” he said.

While Mr Blair has made headway on Africa, he has been stymied on climate change by the United States, the world’s biggest polluter, which has been grudging in even accepting the world is warming and has not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol.

All the other G8 powers — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia — have signed up to the protocol to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, which came into force in February.

NO DEAL YET: A G8 diplomat said an open split with Washington would be avoided but said the officials who had met in London would reconvene in Gleneagles to tackle “the remaining issues and make the text as dynamic and strong as possible”.