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Presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday adopted a common policy to "make the world live up to its historic responsibility" at December’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

France and Brazil on Saturday presented a joint document – a "climate bible" – which urges countries, and the United States and China in particular, to make significant concessions at next month’s UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

The document calls for rich, industrialized countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent from their 1990 levels by 2050. It also urges emerging countries to seek low-carbon growth and to take steps to slow the rise of their emissions by 2050 – with "substantial" financial help from richer nations.

"We are making public... a French-Brazilian text because Brazil and France, we want Copenhagen to be a success, not a cut-price agreement," France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters in Paris, according to AFP.

"We are fighting for the world to live up to its historic responsibility," the president added.

The text was unveiled after talks between Sarkozy and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula told reporters the document was "more than a declaration of intent, it is a climate bible" and the two leaders said the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, the United States and China, had to show more boldness in accepting commitments at Copenhagen.

At the same time, Lula said, according to Reuters, that "we cannot allow [US] President Obama and [Chinese] President Hu Jintao to celebrate an accord which only takes the economic realities of their two countries into account".

Lula said he would phone Barack Obama, probably on Monday, ahead of Obama's scheduled meeting with Hu Jintao on Tuesday in Beijing.

Brazil pledged on Friday to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by between 36.1 percent and 38.9 percent, largely by controlling deforestation in the Amazon region. The country is the fourth-biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, largely because of carbon dioxide released through deforestation of its vast Amazon forest.

French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said on Sunday that the United States is the main obstacle to concluding an ambitious climate deal at the Copenhagen conference.

"It's the world's number one power, the biggest emitter (of greenhouse gases), the biggest per capita emitter and it's saying 'I'd like to but I can't'. That's the issue," he told Reuters in an interview.