TOKYO, May 18, 2009 (AFP) – Japan must set an ambitious mid-term target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions to help global talks on drafting a new climate treaty, the Danish minister for climate and energy said Monday.

Copenhagen will host a December meeting to hammer out a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. The European Union has said it would slash emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and raise the target to 30 percent if others set similarly ambitious targets.

“I believe that it is absolutely necessary that the mid-term target that will come out of Japan next month must be a mid-term target that is so ambitious that for instance, it forces the European Union to go from the 20 percent” to 30 percent, said Denmark’s Connie Hedegaard.

Countries are at odds over how to divide the burden of cutting emission of gases responsible for global warming. The European Union and Japan agree that the long-term global target should be 50 percent by 2050, but they disagree on which year should be the base year to calculate the target.

“Japan can make a positive push to negotiations by coming up with an ambitious target,” said Hedegaard, who earlier met Prime Minister Taro Aso.

“Then you will put the pressure on other leading economies as well, because then they cannot continue to hide behind others.”

Japan argues that setting national targets should take into consideration the fact that Tokyo has already improved energy-efficiency so that it is more expensive for it to slash emission further.

Hedegaard, praising Japan’s cutting-edge energy efficiency and hybrid auto technologies, said that “in the 70s and 80s Japan was admired by the rest of the world” for its industrial success.

“Today I believe that if you are a CEO of an American car manufacturer you would envy what Japan has been doing earlier, and I want Japan to repeat that,” she said. “I also do believe that will increase the pressure on China.”

For emerging economies such as China and India, which do not shoulder obligatory emission cut targets under the Kyoto treaty, she said “extensive technology cooperation” is key in engaging them in the new treaty.

She added that it was in China’s self-interest to develop less polluting technologies to have “cleaner and smarter solutions”.