ROME – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Monday that he will telephone U.S. counterpart Barack Obama and China’s Hu Jintao to discuss the fight against climate change after Washington and Beijing agreed they are not ready to set targets for emissions reduction.

“I’m disappointed, but not surprised” at the agreement reached in Singapore between Obama and Hu, but “the United States and China must sooner or later propose their targets also, although it won’t be at the Copenhagen Conference,” Lula told reporters after meeting in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The United States and China, the world’s biggest polluters, on Sunday dealt a blow to the climate conference that will begin Dec. 7 in Copenhagen after informing the Danish government that it will not be possible at that summit to achieve an accord that will set targets for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, the main factor in global warming.

Lula emphasized that he will go to Copenhagen regardless to defend Brazil’s climate proposals.

Last Saturday, Lula and French President Nicolas Sarkozy noted that the final objective of the Copenhagen summit is a worldwide reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 compared to their level in 1990.

Lula is in Rome to attend the World Summit of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. EFE