NUSA DUA, Indonesia — European nations threatened yesterday to boycott U.S.-sponsored climate talks next month in Honolulu unless the Bush administration compromises and agrees to a "road map" for reducing greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

Throughout a week of negotiations on the island of Bali, Bush administration officials have steadily resisted a United Nations proposal calling on industrialized countries to accept a goal of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent by 2020.

In retaliation, several European officials said they may not attend the next installment of the White House-sponsored "major economies meeting" on global warming set for Honolulu.

In an interview yesterday, German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it would not make sense for Bush to continue those talks unless negotiators make significant progress here in defining the range of emissions cuts they need to consider.

"If we will not find a solution here in Bali, I cannot see what we should negotiate in the major economies meetings," Gabriel said.

Delegates to the U.N.-sponsored talks in Bali burst into applause last night when former vice president Al Gore blamed the Bush administration for jeopardizing the negotiations and alluded to the end of Bush's term in office in just over a year.

In a 48-minute speech, Gore urged delegates here to "go far, quickly" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming, saying they should forge ahead with a consensus statement and leave "a large open space in your document" to allow a future U.S. president to work more aggressively to curb global warming.

Gore added that he understood how some delegates might be tempted to abandon the process altogether, but he cautioned that if the talks collapse, "the entire world could lose momentum and could lose progress."

Instead, Gore suggested that they "negotiate around this enormous obstacle, this elephant in the room."

The talks are deadlocked over the question of how much industrialized and developing nations must each do to reduce global warming pollution.

While some U.S. supporters, such as Canada and Japan, have backed the administration's negotiating stance, America's European allies were making a concerted effort to distance themselves.

Administration officials, for their part, said at a news conference that they remain committed to producing a document that would allow both industrialized and developing nations to explore a range of options aimed at curbing dangerous climate change.

James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the proposal to "magically find an agreement" by setting a range of emissions targets at the outset of a two-year negotiating process "in itself is a blocking effort."

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