Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell told the gathering his government hoped to play a key role in brokering a pact which would include both the United States and China.

The deal would be an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement adopted in December 1997 but which excluded developing giants China and India and which Australia and the United States have refused to ratify.

The protocol, which came into force in January, set legally binding targets for developed countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.

US President George W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard have denounced the pact because of the threat posed to their economies by the large developing nations that were not required to meet emissions reduction targets.

Friday's meeting focussed on a plan being drawn up by the US-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change, whose president Eileen Claussen was in Sydney for the discussions.

The Australian and New Zealand ministers and industry chiefs discussed ways of both reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their countries and encouraging developing nations to do the same.

Campbell said that Australia, a close US ally which is also developing close economic links with China, was well-positioned to help draw the two giants into a new agreement.

"We (Australia and the US) are working on projects around the world together to use methane as a resource as opposed to seeing it go into the atmosphere, (we are) actually generating energy from it," Campbell said.

"So we've got that very strong relationship, technology based, politically based and economically based with the US. We also have a strengthening relationship with China."

The Sydney forum was part of a series of meetings convened by the Pew Center designed to lead by September to a new manifesto for fighting global warming.

"This dialogue is one of the most optimistic forums we have got on the planet," Campbell told reporters before Friday's meeting.

"It's saying let's recognise the fact that Kyoto was a start. I think this is a really big policy challenge," he said.

Pew Center research suggests moving beyond the binding greenhouse gas reduction targets set by Kyoto for developed nations to voluntary emissions reduction actions for industry.

"One of the things that will be important is flexibility to develop a framework that incorporates actions to engage more countries and more players and therefore achieve more reductions than a simple target-based approach," said Alcoa Australia executive Meg McDonald.

"Countries like India and China will need that flexibility. They are keen to adopt greenhouse technologies and companies like ours going into that market are keen to help make that happen," she told The Australian newspaper ahead of Friday's meeting.

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