In a rare interview with a British newspaper, President Lula told the Guardian that Brazil, a fast developing country whose support is critical to a global deal on emission cuts, had not even been informed that Mr Bush was contemplating a new negotiating framework, before the US president made his announcement last Thursday.

"The Brazilian position is clear cut," Mr Lula said. "I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.

"If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision ... then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution," said Mr Lula, who was in London to watch Friday's England-Brazil international football friendly.

The Bush administration has sought to cultivate President Lula as an ally, seeing the former trade unionist as a centre-left alternative in Latin America to the more radical anti-American socialism espoused by Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Presidents Bush and Lula also share an enthusiasm for the potential for "bio-fuels" made from plants as a substitute for fossil fuels.

However, on overall climate change policy, President Lula was dismissive of the Bush approach, calling it "voluntarism", meaning a reliance on "coalitions of the willing" rather than establish global institutions and the pursuit of voluntary goals rather than binding commitments. "We cannot let voluntarism override multilateralism," he said.

President Bush said last week that he wanted Brazil and other rapidly developing countries to join rich nations in what he called a "new framework" to curb greenhouse gas emissions as an alternative to the planned UN process. He said that later this year he would convene a series of meetings of the 15 nations that produced most greenhouse gas emissions.

But Mr Lula, Brazil's president since 2003, rebuked Mr Bush for seemingly sidestepping the UN and not taking its global responsibilities seriously. "I am open-minded about talking to President Bush ... I will never refuse to discuss any idea, but we should respect the decisions made in the multilateral forums. It is the only thing we have all agreed on in a democratic way," he said. "If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions."

The German hosts of this week's G8 summit at Heiligendamm have also flatly rejected the idea of creating a separate process to deal with climate change. Chancellor Angela Merkel called it "non-negotiable". Tony Blair has been a lonely voice on the world stage, hailing the Bush plan as an "important step forward".

President Lula will be one of five leaders of rapidly developing countries to join the G8 leaders in Germany, where he will champion Brazil's global leadership in the use of plant-derived ethanol for fuel.

His promotion of bio-fuels has brought criticism from Mr Chavez, the continent's leading oil producer and Castro, who has argued that growing bio-fuels is equivalent to taking food crops from the mouths of the poor and putting it in the petrol tanks of the wealthy.

Mr Lula picked his words on his fellow presidents carefully. "Its normal that those countries that have oil feel a bit strange about this idea of bio-fuels," he said, but he suggested it was time for the Latin American left to move beyond its instinctive anti-Americanism. "A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US," he said. "We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn't think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests."

Asked about the global legacy left by the Tony Blair, who has highlighted his own efforts to improve aid and trade conditions for developing countries, President Lula had little to say. "I didn't have much contact with prime minister Tony Blair," he noted.

President Lula said the decisive moment in the current "Doha round" of talks would come in the next few weeks, with the G8 summit at a trade ministers' meeting due in mid-June.

"I think that this month something has to happen. If nothing happens, we will go into history as a generation of politicians that failed humanity, especially the poor," the president said. "If there is no agreement on Doha round, it's useless to talk about fighting terrorism, its useless to fight organised crime because poverty is the principal seed for the growth of terrorism."

The only more important issue in the world than trade, President Lula said, is climate change, and both are nearing a potential turning point.

"In the Doha round, I want to solve the issues of today and tomorrow," the Brazilian leader said. "On the climate issue I have to solve the problem of planet earth, the only one we know of on which we can survive ... So for God's sake, let's take care of planet earth."