Obama won't visit U.N. climate talks in Poland: U.N.

OSLO (Reuters) - President-elect Barack Obama will not attend United Nations talks in Poland next month working on a new treaty for fighting global warming, the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said on Monday.

"There is not going to be an Obama delegation in Poznan," Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat, told a news conference in Germany that was also shown on the Internet. The 190-nation talks will be held from December 1-12 in the Polish city of Poznan.

"There is one president at a time," he said. Obama will take over from President George W. Bush on January 20, 2009.

After Obama won the presidency last month, de Boer expressed hopes that Obama might attend the Poznan meeting, which is due to work on details of a new climate treaty.

A new pact to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol is meant to be in place by the end of 2009. De Boer said that the U.S. delegation in Poznan would liaise closely with Obama's team.

(Editing by William Hardy)