"They gathered in July at the incongruously named Commune by the Great Wall, a high-concept luxury hotel nestled in China's Badaling mountains.

For two days, the secluded group of top U.S. and Chinese officials -- including one member of the Bush administration and a handful of now high-level Obama advisers -- worked out climate change policy. Participants yesterday said the off-the-record sessions broke new ground and may have laid the foundation for new cooperation between the world's two largest emitters on the thorny matter of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases."

Lisa Friedman reports for ClimateWire in the New York Times May 20, 2009. [2]