Expectations for this week's summit talks on climate were always low.
Many are sceptical that any significant new steps to combat global warming can be made until a new U.S. president comes to office in January 2009. It was a view shared by South Africa, one of five big emerging economies collectively called the G5.
"Until there's a change in the position of the United States, South Africa's feeling is that it will be very difficult for the G5 to move forward because they will always be forced to work on that level of the lowest common denominator," South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters.
Developing countries, along with the European Union and green groups, say rich countries must take the lead and specify interim targets for how to reach the mid-century goal, which scientists say is the minimum needed to prevent dangerous global warming.
AFGHANISTAN, AFRICA
India told the major economies meeting that developed countries had not done enough.
"This must change and you (the G8) must all show the leadership that you have always promised by taking and then delivering truly significant GHG (greenhouse gas) reductions," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told the meeting.
The stance of emerging nations is important. The G8 nations emit about 40 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions. China and India together emit about 25 percent of the total, a proportion that is rising as their coal-fuelled economies boom.
Leaders of the G8 countries agreed at the summit to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe's leaders because of violence during the widely condemned re-election of President Robert Mugabe.
"There should be no safe haven and no hiding place for the criminal cabal that now make up the Mugabe regime," Prime Minister Gordon Brown told a news conference after the summit.
The G8 also urged Afghanistan's government to take more responsibility for its own security and reconstruction, and pledged to increase assistance to that country's army and police.
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said members agreed with "unprecedented unanimity" about the need to do much more.
Some 900 soldiers in a U.S.-led coalition force have died in Afghanistan since 2001, among them 90 Canadians.
The G8 countries reassured sceptics on Tuesday that they were "firmly committed" to an aid target for Africa that was pledged at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.
Aid workers and NGOs have expressed concern that donor countries would fail to meet a G8 pledge to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion (25.3 billion pounds) by 2010, half of which was to go to Africa.
The G8 leaders also acknowledged the economic threat from surging oil and food prices, which could drive millions more into poverty, but came up with no fresh initiatives to tackle what they said were complex problems requiring long-term solutions.
