Brazil says U.S. climate goals unacceptable

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said on Wednesday that U.S. targets for greenhouse gas emissions were unacceptably weak and that it should seek reductions of at least 20 percent from levels in 1990.

Brazil would soon announce targets to substantially curb emissions before a crucial global climate summit in Copenhagen in December, he said in an interview as part of the Reuters' Climate Change and Alternative Energy Summit.

"We don't accept that, it's very poor," Minc said, referring to the U.S. administration's stated targets of returning to its 1990 level emissions by 2020.

"They have to come closer to something beyond a 20 percent reduction," said Minc.

The South American nation is expected to play a key role in negotiations at a summit in Copenhagen in December that will seek to frame a new international treaty on climate change.

The U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen aim to reach agreement on a post-Kyoto pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming.

Brazil will this month impose new restrictions on sugar cane planting and ban new cane refineries in the Amazon rain forest and the Pantanal wetland area, Minc said.

"They will in part force the agricultural businesses to change their behavior," said Minc, a co-founder of the Green Party in Brazil.

The government on Thursday will also place new restrictions on agriculture in its vast central savannah region, where figures show farming and settlements destroyed a 120,000 square km (46,300 sq mile) area in the past six years, Minc said.

"We'll impose the same restrictions we did in the Amazon," he said, referring to bans on selling farm products from illegally deforested areas.

The savannah area is rich in biodiversity and helps protect some of the country's largest fresh-water reserves. Since the 1970s it has been the main area of expansion for Brazil's agriculture sector, one of the world's largest.

(Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Chris Wilson)