President George W. Bush urged the world's biggest polluters to develop clean technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions while vowing that the U.S. ``will do our part.''

At a climate change meeting of 17 countries in Washington, Bush called for an international fund to help developing nations finance clean-energy projects and said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will lead the effort.

The president didn't endorse globally negotiated, mandatory carbon-dioxide limits that many world leaders, lawmakers and scientists say are needed to avoid the most damaging effects of global warming. European Union officials gave Bush's address a lukewarm response and stressed that legally binding carbon cuts are needed in the fight against climate change.

``We can't allow ourselves to lose any more time,'' Mogens Peter Carl, the European Commission's director general for the environment, said at a news conference after today's meeting.

The majority of the countries represented at the meeting held by the Bush administration, including developing nations such as China, favored mandatory carbon reductions for all industrialized countries, Carl said.

Bush sidestepped the cap issue and touted his administration's investments in clean-energy research and his push for Congress to approve a 20 percent cut in gasoline usage.

``What I'm telling you is, we've got a strategy,'' Bush told the gathering of representatives from countries including India, Germany and Brazil. ``We've got a comprehensive approach.''

Week of Events

Bush's speech capped a week of high-profile climate change events, including a one-day summit at the United Nations in New York on Sept. 24. Bush's comments today mark his most comprehensive to date about earth's rising temperatures and sea levels.

``Our understanding of climate change has come a long way,'' said Bush, who has previously questioned the science behind climate change.

He focused on linking the problems of climate change and energy independence.

``For many years, those who worried about climate change and those who worried about energy security were on opposite ends of the debate,'' Bush said. ``Today we know better. These challenges share a common solution: technology.''

He touted the use of clean coal technology, wind and solar power and greater use of nuclear power plants, cellulosic ethanol, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen-powered automobiles.

Each nation ``must decide for itself the right mix of tools and technologies,'' to combat global warming, he said.

Democrats Renew Criticism

While Bush pushed countries and the private sector to find market-based solutions to climate change, Democrats this week renewed criticism of his opposition to a global carbon emissions trading system.

``The only environmental ideal the president seems committed to is recycling rhetoric,'' said Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, who attended Bush's speech. ``After a week of attention to the issue of global warming, the president is no closer to supporting mandatory targets for reducing heat-trapping pollution.''

``The rest of the world is just stunned at the lack of support from this administration for a cap-and-trade system, which is, as you know, a free-market system,'' said Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer of California.

Such a system, which helped curb acid rain in the U.S., is ``a way to put a price on carbon that really works,'' Boxer, the head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said yesterday in an interview in Washington.

Emissions Trading

Citigroup Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. are among investment banks in Washington this week to promote emissions trading as an alternative to carbon dioxide taxes. At least five proposals to cut greenhouse gases blamed for climate change are in Congress.

Global emissions trading could reach about $100 billion by 2020, New York-based Lehman said in a Sept. 20 report. That assumes the U.S., China and Japan adopt trading plans that cover 50 percent of their total emissions. The market was worth $30 billion last year, World Bank figures show.

Bush called for today's meeting earlier this year while under pressure from other countries, businesses and even fellow Republicans to support a required cap on global warming pollution and take a more active role in coming negotiations to craft a new worldwide climate treaty.

Key to the Process

The U.S. is considered key to the process because it's the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The current Kyoto accord, which requires developed countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, expires in 2012. The U.S. and Australia are the only industrialized countries that haven't signed onto the accord. Developing countries such as China are exempt from the carbon cuts required under Kyoto.

Talks to replace Kyoto will be overseen by the United Nations and begin in December in Bali, Indonesia. Bush has proposed a series of meetings with the world's major emitters to coincide with those negotiations.

Bush today said the countries, which collectively account for more than 80 percent of the world's global warming pollution, need to set a long-term goal to curb emissions and that he would call a meeting of heads of state within a year to ``finalize the goal.''

`There Is a Problem'

``By setting this goal, we acknowledge there is a problem, and by setting this goal, we commit ourselves to doing something about it,'' Bush said. ``We must lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions'' in a way that doesn't harm economic expansion.

Critics of Bush's climate policies say the administration is trying to delay taking action until the president leaves office in January 2009.

``Deny, delay, dissemble, that's the evolution of the Bush climate policy,'' said Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit group.