Most world leaders plan to attend UN Copenhagen summit next week

Most world leaders plan to attend a climate summit in Copenhagen this month, boosting chances that a new UN deal to fight climate change will be reached, host Denmark said.

The number of leaders planning to come to the December 7-18 talks had risen to 98 out of the 192 members of the UN, Denmark said. The number was up from 65 in a first count after invitations were sent last month.

"It gives me a strong feeling that we are on the right track," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told a news conference.

Many analysts say chances of healing deep rifts between rich and poor nations over how to fight global warming have improved after leaders including US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jibao have said they would come to Copenhagen.

Mr Obama plans to attend on Wednesday, a day before he is due to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Most other leaders plan to visit on December 17-18, pinning prestige on getting a deal done. Denmark has not issued a list of names. In Australia, a government plan to introduce carbon trading was headed for defeat in the Senate after the opposition picked a new leader hostile to the scheme, which would be the biggest economic policy change in modern Australian history.

The US is watching Australia's debate closely. A political agreement on carbon trading in Australia could help garner support for action from other countries.

Australia's new Liberal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said conservative senators, many of them climate change sceptics, would reject government's plans for emissions trading laws if they were not deferred until early 2010.

Mr Abbott said he believed in climate change but told reporters he was opposed to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's planned emissions trading scheme model.

"This is going to be a tough fight. But it will be a fight. You cannot win an election without a fight," said Abbott, a boxer in his university days who once studied for priesthood.

Australia's Assistant Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the government would still push for its carbon trade laws to be passed this week, and said he hoped some opposition lawmakers would side with the government and defy Mr Abbott.

He wants emissions trading to start in Australia in July 2011, covering 75 per cent of emissions in the developed world's bigger per capita emitter.

The planned carbon trade scheme would be the biggest outside Europe, the cornerstone of European Union efforts to help avert warming that it says will cause more powerful cyclones, mudslides, desertification, species extinctions and rising seas.

But there are deep rifts to be resolved. India on Monday rejected as a "dead end" a draft Danish text that suggested a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 from 1990 levels. Rasmussen said Denmark had issued no formal proposals.

Developing nations such as China and India want the rich to do far more, starting with cuts of 40 per cent in their own emissions by 2020 below 1990 levels, before asking poorer developing nations to forsake fossil fuels.

Factbox

Environment ministers and officials as well as many heads of state and government plan to attend.

• Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said that the number of leaders who had confirmed they would attend the conference had risen to 98.

• Most are expected to come for final two days of the conference - December 17-18 - when the meetings for heads of state and government are to take place. But a US administration official has been quoted as saying some may aim to attend on December 9, the same day as President Barack Obama.

Leaders attending:

• Austria - Environment Minister Niki Berlakovich.

• Bangladesh - Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

• Britain - Prime Minister Gordon Brown was one of the first world leaders to commit to attending the Copenhagen talks. His office has not specified when he will attend.

• China - Premier Wen Jiabao will go, but his office has not specified when or how long he will stay.

• Ethiopia - Prime Minister Meles Zenawi will head the African delegation to the conference. Mauritian Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam and Seychellois President James Michel have also confirmed they are attending. EU - European Commission President Barroso, December 17-18.

• France - President Nicolas Sarkozy, December 17-18.

• Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkel, December 17-18 (provisional).

• Nepal - Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, December 15-17.

• The Netherlands - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, December 17-18. Also Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer.

• Norway - Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Dec. 16-19 (provisional).

• Slovakia - Prime Minister Robert Fico (provisional).

• Slovenia - Prime Minister Borut Pahor and Environment Minister Karl Erjavec.

• US - President Barack Obama, December 9.

(Factbox source: AFP)