Brazil urges world leaders to attend UN climate meet

Posted at 11/10/2009 12:23 AM | Updated as of 11/10/2009 12:23 AM

BRASILIA - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Monday called on his counterparts from the world's most polluting countries to attend a UN climate change summit next month.

The results of the December 16-17 conference in Copenhagen "will depend a lot on the presence of all the presidents," he said in his weekly radio address.

Lula said he had already put the call out to Britain, France and Germany, and this week "I am committed to calling presidents (Barack) Obama and Hu Jintao," referring to the leaders of the United States and China.

The aim is to see "if we can manage to build a proposal... to sign a treaty that guarantees that the world will start to curb pollution."

Brazil is insisting that wealthy industrialized countries that have been emitting greenhouse gases for generations pay billions to it and other developing nations to encourage them to cut carbon dioxide output.

Lula reiterated that his country was intent on reducing the rate of Amazon deforestation 80 percent by 2020, and said the countries that shared the Amazon basin were trying to reach a common position for the Copenhagen talks.

The UN conference's goal is to come up with a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said Friday that 40 heads of state or government have signaled they would attend the talks, including Lula, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy.


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