FACTBOX: Quotes from high-level part of Copenhagen climate talks

(Reuters) - Following are notable quotes from U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen on Wednesday. A summit of more than 120 world leaders will be held on Thursday and Friday to try to break the deadlock on who should cut greenhouse gas emissions, by how much and who should pay.

VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ

"The rich countries of the north helped bankers, the big banks. I've forgotten the figure, but it's astronomical.

"What they're saying on the streets is that 'if the climate was a bank they would already have saved it'. I think it's true. if the climate was a capitalist bank, a capitalist bank, one of the biggest ones, they would have saved it.

"I think (U.S. President Barack) Obama isn't here yet. He got the Nobel Peace Prize almost the same day as he sent 30,000 soldiers to kill innocent people in Afghanistan."

"There is an imperial dictatorship in this world, and we continue to denounce it. There is no democracy in the world. The destructive model of capitalism is eradicating life."

"We need to consume less and distribute more. Climate change is certainly the most devastating environmental problem of the last century -- droughts, hurricanes, floods the rising sea level, heatwaves and so on."

ANDREAS CARLGREN, SWEDISH ENVIRONMENT MINISTER

"From the United States we expect, as from all developed countries, a legally binding economy-wide commitment to reduce emissions," Carlgren told delegates.

SENEGALESE PRESIDENT ABDOULAYE WADE

"Africa is physically threatened. You can see coastal erosion, the fact that lake Chad has shrunk, the Congo basin -- a true lung of humanity -- has been massacred by European operators...the Sahara desert which, like a steamroller advances toward the south on a broad desert band," he told delegates.

JAIRAM RAMESH, INDIAN ENVIRONMENT MINISTER

"By trying to shake Kyoto, they (rich nations) are trying to shake one of the basic pillars on which the world had resolved to fight climate change," Ramesh told reporters.

Developing nations want to preserve the Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.'s main tool to fight climate change. Some rich nations say Kyoto hasn't worked and that a separate deal that binds all big carbon emitting nations is needed. The United States never ratified Kyoto.

"Kyoto needs a number of oxygen cylinders. One of them is in the White House," Ramesh said.

U.S. SENATOR JOHN KERRY

"If (former Vice President) Dick Cheney can argue that even a 1 percent chance of a terrorist attack is 100 percent justification for preemptive action, then surely, when scientists tell us that climate change is nearly a 100 percent certainty, we ought to be able to stand together...and join in an all out effort to combat a mortal threat to the life of this planet," he said in a speech to a U.N. group.

JEREMY HOBBS, OXFAM

"We're in a crisis ... we've had nearly two weeks of negotiations, two weeks of work and it's still up in the air with less than two days to go."

KIM CARSTENSEN, HEAD OF WWF'S GLOBAL CLIMATE INITIATIVE

"The world will look back on this conference from a state of climate chaos or from a state of narrowly averted climate crisis. When we look back, will we be talking of the cure of Copenhagen or the curse of Copenhagen?" he said in a statement.

(Reporting by Alister Doyle, Krittivas Mukherjee, Emma Graham-Harrison, Richard Cowan and David Fogarty)