Their declaration calls for cutting the emissions in half by 2050, Miss Merkel said a goal some leaders had feared she would notreach due to persistent US opposition to any agreement withbinding caps on reductions. Miss Merkel, who has made climate change the centerpiece of Germany's G-8 leadership, had steadily lobbied fellow leaders on climate change since they began arriving to this seaside resort for theirannual summit. “No one can escape this political declaration; it is an enormousstep forward,” she told reporters.

Details about the declaration on climate change were notimmediately available, and it was unclear how much binding weightsuch a ``political declaration'' would carry. A final summitcommunique was not expected until Friday. Miss Merkel has long called for setting specific targets for thereduction of the carbon emissions believed to cause global warming,including a so-called two-degree target under which globaltemperatures would be allowed to increase by no more than two degrees Celsius before being brought back down.