President Arroyo is now open to proposals to individual targets of carbon emission reductions for countries to facilitate a new climate change deal in Copenhagen next month.

The President has announced her government would no longer insist its earlier position for nations to adopt “deep and early” cuts in greenhouse gases over the next decade following stalled.

The sudden change of heart of the President came a few days before the arrival of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for a two-day swing in Manila. The United States has refused to heed calls to slash quantified carbon emissions and instead pushed for individual goals among nations.

"We need to define our position now. We need not insist on deep and early cuts in carbon emission, but we should require countries to make a commitment," she said during a Cabinet meeting in Loboc, Bohol last Tuesday.

Mrs. Arroyo said she does not want to see negotiations on climate change bog down as what happened in world trade talks in Doha, Qatar.

“For the sake of the planet, the President said, she will agree on different cuts, as long as the countries commit themselves to implement such cuts, once they agree on a treaty,” a Palace press statement read.

The Philippines has supported a position taken by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that industrialized countries should slash carbon emissions by at least 50 percent in 2050.

Pushing for such ambition carbon emissions cuts however would be “useless” for developing countries like the Philippines if the United States and China refuses to join the deal, according to the President. “We have to give them room to decide how much they could afford to give,'' she said.