UPDATE 2-G8 environment ministers: halve emissions by 2050

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By Linda Sieg

KOBE, Japan, May 26 (Reuters) - Environment ministers from the G8 rich nations on Monday urged their leaders to set a global target to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a small but vital step in the fight against climate change.

But they stopped short of suggesting specific interim targets ahead of 2050, a key demand of developing countries in tough U.N.-led talks to forge a new treaty on global warming by the end of next year.

Germany's secretary of state for the environment, Matthias Machnig, said the ministers had sent an important signal to their leaders on the direction in which talks needed to go.

"We made a step here today, a small one, but a very important one," he told a joint news conference.

About 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which binds 37 advanced nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

But wide gaps exist inside the G8 and between rich and poorer nations over how to share the burden for fighting the climate change that causes droughts, rising seas and more severe storms.

Ministers from the Group of Eight and major emerging countries had sought in weekend talks in western Japan to build momentum ahead of a July summit in Toyako, northern Japan.