Japan's environment minister yesterday criticised George W. Bush's plan to minimise greenhouse emissions, saying the US president's ambitions "fell far short" of expectations. Reacting to Mr Bush's pledge to halt the growth of US carbon emissions by 2025, Ichiro Kamoshita said: "Truthfully, I want the US to tackle the issue of global warming more proactively." Japan, which hosts the Group of Eight summit in Hokkaido in July, wants to forge a compromise between the US and Europe on the one hand and big developing countries, particularly China and India, on the other. It has tried to bridge the gap by proposing a sectoral approach. Instead of imposing top-down targets, the idea is to arrive at an overall voluntary target by improving technology industry by industry. One senior European official dismissed the idea as a "non-starter", saying it had already been rejected by China and India. Mr Kamoshita's comments exposed deep divisions within the Japanese government, contrasting with those of Nobutaka Machimura, the chief cabinet secretary, who welcomed Mr Bush's plan. "I value the [US] administration's move to deal positively with the issue," Mr Machimura said. Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, special adviser on climate change to Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's prime minister, told the FT it was vital the US set a good example in order to persuade developing countries to join a post-Kyoto protocol. "As long as the US is away from the United Nations fold, there's no incentive, or moral force, to oblige China to join us," he said. He conceded there were big differences of opinion between Japanese business, which has rejected the need for further mandatory cuts, and some sections of the Japanese government that favour numerical targets and possibly a cap-and-trade approach. However, Mr Nishimura said Mr Fukuda was "determined to respond to this planetary challenge", and insisted that Japanese business, while rejecting mandatory targets, was making strenuous efforts to cut emissions. Big differences of opinion between Japan, the US and Europe were also evident in a G8 business forum of industry associations, held in Tokyo this week as part of the run-up to July's summit. The joint statement stressed flexibility and diversity of national approach - code for avoiding a shared mandatory target - and urged a balance between economic growth and protecting the environment. But J