Mr Blair said The Climate Group had convened a panel of experts to examine possible frameworks for the deal and will deliver a report to a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in July. -- PHOTO: AP

Mr Blair, who stepped down as Britain's leader in June, said his talks with lawmakers and business leaders are aimed at breaking a deadlock on setting new targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide.

Speaking before the visit, he warned that the global response to climate change is still not living up to the scale of the problem.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Wednesday that developed countries are chiefly responsible for global warming, insisting that developing nations should be allowed to set lower emission reduction targets.

China and some other developing countries, including India, argue their economies should not be penalized by binding cuts when their per capita emissions are below those in developed countries.

But Mr Blair, who was arriving in Tokyo on Friday, said the successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol - which set binding targets on industrial countries to cut emissions by 2012 - must involve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

'We believe that there is a huge economic opportunity - for countries, for business, for people in taking action on climate change,' Mr Blair said in a video message posted on his Web site.

'But it won't be maximized unless there is that true global deal, one with everybody in it, one that has in its heart a substantial cut in emissions and that most crucially has the means of doing it,' he said.

Mr Blair was carrying out the unpaid seven-day tour in his role as a consultant to The Climate Group, a nonprofit organisation which is funded by corporations and governments from around the world.

In December, delegations from nearly 190 countries agreed at a UN-sponsored conference in Bali, Indonesia, to adopt a blueprint for controlling global warming gases before the end of next year.

Mr Blair said The Climate Group had convened a panel of experts to examine possible frameworks for the deal and will deliver a report to a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in July.

'Unless there is a concerted global deal where there is a framework that everyone agrees to ... then it isn't going to work,' Mr Blair said.

'What we know at the moment is that whatever deals are being done on a unilateral basis in individual countries, the amount of emissions are still rising,' he said.

China now generates a large share of the world's greenhouse gases, with some experts saying it has already overtaken the US as the world's No. 1 emitter. -- AP