Obama says still time for climate deal this year

By Matt Spetalnick and Phil Stewart

L'AQUILA, Italy (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama said on Thursday there was still time to close the gap with developing powers on climate change, after the U.N. chief criticised the G8 for not going hard enough.

On the first day of a meeting of the Group of Eight major industrialised nations in L'Aquila in Italy, the G8 failed to get China and India to accept the goal of halving emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050.

Obama, hoping to make his mark on his first G8 summit by chairing a meeting of rich and emerging powers on the environment, said progress could still be made before talks on a new U.N. climate change treaty in Copenhagen in December.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama told Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that "there was still time in which they could close the gap on that disagreement in time for that important (meeting)".

Obama was due to chair the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF), which was likely to agree to try to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) versus pre-industrial levels but not to agree on the scale of emission cuts.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said progress on climate change at the G8 was "not enough" so far.

"This is politically and morally (an) imperative and historic responsibility ... for the future of humanity, even for the future of the planet Earth," the U.N. chief said.

Progress was hampered by the absence of Chinese President Hu Jintao, who left L'Aquila to attend to ethnic clashes in China's northwest that have killed 156 people.