France and the United States appeared to clash Thursday over the legal status of a global pact to be agreed in Paris in December to stave off dangerous climate change.

France and the United States appeared to clash Thursday over the legal status of a global pact to be agreed in Paris in December to stave off dangerous climate change.

"If there is not a binding accord, there will not be an accord," French President Francois Hollande said in Malta while attending a European Union-Africa summit.

A day earlier US Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear the United States would not sign a deal in which countries were legally obliged to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Paris agreement, he told the Financial Times, was "definitively not going to be a treaty... They're not going to be legally binding reduction targets like Kyoto or something."