Denmark wants to speed up climate negotiations

Denmark on Tuesday said negotiations on a new global climate deal were proceeding "too slowly" and called for speeding up the process before a crucial UN summit in less than six months.

"It is time for a frank and open dialogue so the participating countries can make clear their positions, their concerns," said Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard.

The United Nations hopes to wrap up negotiations in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December for a new global warming pact to replace the Kyoto protocol on cutting carbon emissions which expires in 2012.

Hedegaard said it was "essential" that political representatives meet to move more quickly toward the ambitious accord to be presented at the Copenhagen summit, which needs more emphasis "on solutions rather than the problems".

She made her remarks before the opening of an informal meeting of some 30 ministers and delegates on climate change in Ilulissat on Greenland's west coast.

Some of the world's biggest polluters -- Brazil, Britain, France, Germany, India, Japan, Russia and the United States -- all sent representatives to the four-day "Greenland dialogue", an annual meeting on climate change first held by Denmark four years ago in the same town.

Only China declined the invitation, which Danish media speculated may be due to Beijing's protest over a visit by the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to Copenhagen in May.

Greenland's Ilulissat glacier, which has become a symbol of climate change, lost 94 square kilometres (60 square miles) of surface area between 2001 and 2005 due to global warming, according to a US study published last year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in early 2007 that global warming, if unchecked, would unleash a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by the end of this century.