President Joe Biden is including Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping among the invitees to the first big climate talks under his administration to be held on April 22 and 23.

The event, the US hopes, will help shape, speed up and deepen global efforts to cut climate-wrecking fossil fuel pollution, administration officials said, AP reported.

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Forty world leaders were invited on Friday to the meeting meant to mark Washington’s return to the front lines of the fight against man-made climate change, after former president Donald Trump disengaged from the process.

“They know they’re invited,” Biden said of Xi and Putin, AFP reported. “But I haven’t spoken to either one of them yet.”

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Hosting the summit will fulfil a campaign pledge and executive order by Biden, and the administration is timing the event with its own upcoming announcement of what’s a much tougher US target for revamping the US economy to sharply cut emissions from coal, natural gas and oil.

After taking office on January 20, Biden kept his campaign pledge to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on his first day as the President, after his predecessor Trump pulled out of the deal.

The return of the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of carbon dioxide became effective on February 19 and means almost all the world’s nations are now parties to the agreement signed in 2015.

The start of the summit on April 22 coincides with Earth Day, and will come ahead of a major UN meeting on climate change scheduled for November in Glasgow, Scotland.

The event will be staged entirely online due to the coronavirus pandemic.