Rudd, taking part in a major climate summit at the United Nations, hailed pledges by the leaders of Japan and China as providing momentum for a December conference in Copenhagen to draw up the landmark Kyoto Protocol's successor.

"It's clear that there is strong support from developed and developing countries to conclude this deal. It's time to end the blame game," Rudd told reporters.

"What the world needs is a grand bargain between the developed world and the developing world in order to reach an outcome for the planet as a whole," he said.

Rudd said he "congratulated" Japan's new center-left Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for ramping up the economic titan's emission cut pledges to be among the world's most ambitious.

He also said that Chinese President Hu Jintao, who pledged to cut the carbon intensity of the emerging power's rapid economic growth, gave "some indications of shared responsibility for the future."

Emerging economies such as China and India have insisted that rich nations bear the greatest responsibility for carbon emissions blamed for global warming and resisted any international requirements for cuts.

Wealthy nations, however, have pushed for the next global treaty to involve all nations. The Kyoto Protocol, whose obligations run out in 2012, only forced wealthy nations to cut carbon emissions.

"The accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions that exist in the atmosphere now are overwhelmingly the responsibility of the advanced economies," said Rudd, who joined the Kyoto Protocol as his first act in office in 2007.

But he added: "If there is no change in the developing economies, then in time they will represent the largest slice of new and additional greenhouse emissions."

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