"The Secretary of State is leaving for India in a week, and she will raise this issue (climate change) to get the Indians on board," Senator John Kerry said at a Congressional hearing.

Kerry said for the success of the forthcoming Copenhagen meeting on climate change it is very important that India and China come on board.

"And then we have the Europeans and Americans. Those are the four largest emitters, the four largest emitters in the world, prepared to actually go to Copenhagen to do something," Kerry said.

"It will be essential to come out of Copenhagen with some kind of structure that satisfies America and the American people and, through them, this legislature, that we have a mechanism to be able to guarantee that American industry is not going to be disadvantaged or that we don't have a carbon leakage, which is effectively people, because there is some restraint or requirement here in our country, that they go seek another site for the manufacturing of the same product and then try to slip those products back into the country," he said.

Senator Gary Horlick said: "The Indian environment minister a few days ago announced that India would accept a binding limit of the average per capita emissions of developed countries, noting that India has one-tenth of the per capita emissions of the US. So you can easily imagine India saying, 'Well, you know, we're going to require permits from all US exports to India until your per capita emissions are the same as ours.' Well, that's not going to happen for a long time."

Emphasizing on the need to bring India and China on board, Kerry said any global agreement on these issues without these two countries would be meaningless.

"If you have a global agreement and 160 or whatever nations sign on to a reduction target but China were to stay out or India were to stay out you then have a kind of global renegade," he said.