Sarkozy proposes climate pre-summit

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 23 (UPI) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed that world leaders meet to discuss climate change in advance of December's U.N. conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sarkozy said he wanted the pre-summit meeting because of concerns that negotiations on climate change are near a stalemate, the EUobserver reported Wednesday.

At the U.N. climate change conference in December, world leaders are to negotiate an agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol set to expires in 2012.

"Considering how complex this negotiation is, a new summit before Copenhagen is needed," Sarkozy told participants of a U.N. climate change meeting in New York Tuesday. "We are on the path to failure if we continue to act as we have."

During the summit at U.N. headquarters in New York, Chinese President Hu Jintao committed his country to expanding forest coverage by planting trees across 150,000 miles, reducing by an unknown but "notable margin" the country's carbon emission growth and producing 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, the EUobserver said.

Incoming Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama reiterated his commitment that the country will cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020.