LONDON - The US is hoping to get a commitment from India to fight global warming, the Guardian newspaper reported Thursday.

The Obama administration is hoping to win these new commitments from both India and China in back-to-back summits next month, it said, adding that the commitments may include India’s first scheme to trade emissions of greenhouse gases that are leading to climate change.

The US hopes the new commitments will breathe life into the moribund negotiations to seal a global treaty on climate change in Copenhagen in December, by setting out what action each country will take. But many observers say such bilateral deals also risk seriously weakening any Copenhagen agreement by allowing the idea of a global limit on greenhouse gas emissions to be abandoned.

Barack Obama will meet China’s President Hu Jintao in Beijing Nov 16-17 before playing host to Manmohan Singh at the White House Nov 24. The newspaper said the visits appear timed to provide a much-needed boost to a proposed law to reduce US emissions now before the Senate, as well as to the Copenhagen talks.

The US wants to move away from a legally binding global agreement to one where individual countries pledge cuts in their national emissions, it reported, adding that the US State Department envoy, Todd Stern, believes strongly that separate bilateral agreements with countries such as China, India, Russia and Brazil are the building blocks to an agreement at Copenhagen.

But adoption of national action plans is hazardous, say others, as there would be little clear idea of whether together they would avoid dangerous global warming.

“China and India are both critically important to achieving our international goals on carbon reduction. We need them as part the system,” Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who serves on the foreign and environment and public works committees, told the newspaper. “There has already been a lot of work done between US and China, and there is going to be more work done next month with President Obama going to China.”

“We are going to introduce a domestic cap-and-trade programme, but the cap will be on energy intensity, not carbon,” said Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh.

He said the legislation to establish the scheme would be introduced before Singh’s visit to Washington, with a vote in parliament by the end of the year.

New moves from India and China would help Obama at home, where his Democratic allies in the Senate face a tough struggle trying to pass a climate change bill to cut US emissions.

“It is pretty clear to everyone in the US that bilateral agreements with India and China that are new and additional will help secure climate legislation in the US,” said John Coequyt, who heads the climate programme at the Sierra Club. “The big advantage of doing it in (bilateral) form is that it makes sense to members of Congress.”