US special climate envoy Todd Stern wrapped up a four-day visit to Beijing on Wednesday, during which he met key Chinese officials including Vice Premier Li Keqiang and climate negotiator Xie Zhenhua, the US embassy here said.

"We deepened our dialogue with our Chinese counterparts through a candid discussion of the challenges we must overcome and the opportunities we must seize if we and the world are to reach an international climate agreement," it said.

"These meetings were a step in the right direction on the road to Copenhagen and to charting a global path to a clean energy future."

Stern's visit was widely seen as aimed at pressing rapidly growing China to commit to hard numbers on greenhouse gas emissions under the next global warming agreement.

But in an interview with Chinese state media, he appeared to back down from those aims, saying the United States would not push China to adopt a mandatory cap on emissions "at this stage".

"We don't expect China to take a national cap at this stage," the English-language China Daily quoted Stern as saying.

"We understand China's paramount need to grow and develop for its people... our demand is that the development with the available technologies is based on low carbon growth."

As part of ongoing negotiations to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, China has said the bulk of the responsibility for emissions cuts lies with developed nations, while not ruling out making cuts of its own.

It has pledged to play a constructive role in the negotiations for a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen later this year, while implementing domestic energy targets and the development of an alternative and clean energy.

Such efforts have been "very impressive," the paper quoted Stern as saying. The US envoy added he believed that China was "willing to do more".

Officials at the US embassy in Beijing refused to immediately comment on Stern's interview with the China Daily.

Last week, Stern said in a speech in Washington: "China and other developing countries do not need to take the same actions that developed nations are taking.

"But they do need to take significant national actions that they commit to internationally, that they quantify and that are ambitious enough to be broadly consistent with the lessons of science."

The US refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol largely due to a lack of commitments by developing nations to cut emissions.

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