(BRUSSELS) - EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas travelled Monday to the United States for talks on a possible binding international agreement on reducing greenhouse gases, his spokeswoman said.

The news came after a senior White House official announced in Paris that the US is ready to accept "binding international obligations" to cut emissions of the gases blamed for global warming.

"Commissioner Dimas is on his way to the United States for discussions with US authorities on the details of a possible agreement... on an international accord after 2012," the spokeswoman said in Brussels.

"There's a whole UN process under way as well and in that context we are discussing with the US but with other partners as well," she added.

Daniel Price, assistant to US President George W. Bush for International Economic Affairs said in the French capital earlier Monday that "the US is prepared to enter into binding international obligations to reduce greenhouse gases as part of a global agreement."

The agreement could be announced "in conjunction" with the G8 summit of the world's must industrialised nations in Japan in July, Price told journalists, without fixing a date.

The United States has not ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world's most ambitious environment treaty born in the eponymous Japanese city, because it does not cover developing nations.

The international Kyoto agreement, in which around 175 countries agreed to reduce their carbon emissions, expires in 2012.

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