Five EU states vow to step up climate diplomacy

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Britain, France, Denmark, Sweden and Finland agreed Thursday to intensify "green diplomacy" to rescue an ambitious global climate agreement in Copenhagen in December, officials said.

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller said the European Union had shown leadership by committing itself to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 or by 30 percent if other countries make comparable cuts.

"Now it is time to show the same leadership on ensuring an ambitious financial package that can assist the poorest countries to adapt to the challenges posed by climate change," Moller told a news conference.

"We today have agreed to work together to secure an ambitious deal in Copenhagen," Moller said after a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and the Swedish and Finnish foreign ministers Carl Bildt and Alexander Stubb in the Danish capital.

With less than 100 days until the December 7-18 Copenhagen conference, Moller said the momentum toward a climate deal risked fading away if the opportunity were not seized now.

Differences between rich and poor countries over funds for dealing with the consequences of climate change have emerged as the main stumbling block to a new U.N. climate treaty which world leaders hope to agree in Copenhagen in December.

And developing nations say that the rich, which have burned most fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, should promise deeper cuts of 40 percent or more below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change.

"We are here because the Copenhagen agreement hangs in the balance," the UK's Miliband said. "We are now entering the hot phase of the campaign."

Sweden's Bildt said: "As we now approach the Copenhagen meeting, we must accelerate European global green diplomacy, and that is what we have agreed here in Copenhagen to do in the days, weeks and months to come."

The ministers spoke before the European Commission announced in Brussels that Europe could pay poor countries up to 15 billion euros ($22 billion) a year by 2020 to help persuade them to fight climate change -- less than indicated last week.

Speaking before that announcement, the ministers declined to comment on reports earlier this week that the Commission was poised to reduce its climate funding for developing countries.

Instead, Miliband referred to a proposal from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for the world to contribute $100 billion per year from public and private sources to help poor nations cope with climate change as part of a new treaty.

"One hundred billion a year is not peanuts," he said in a panel discussion with his counterparts at Copenhagen University.

(Reporting by John Acher; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)