OSLO - Norway will invite United States politicians to visit a group of fast-thawing Arctic islands in 2007, hoping to win converts for tougher action against global warming, its Foreign Minister says.
"Climate change may be one of the most serious threats mankind has ever faced," Jonas GahrStoere said.
"The Arctic is a clarion call, perhaps more than anywhere else, that things are changing."
Mr Stoere said the Svalbard archipelago, 1000km from the North Pole, where melting glaciers and thawing sea ice is disrupting the lives of people and animals such as polar bears, could be a showcase in 2007 for the effects of warming.
"One ambition we have ... is to extend strategic invitations" for visits to Svalbard, Mr Stoere said about Norway's plans for International Polar Year in 2007.
"In particular we are working towards the United States. We are thinking in terms of key advisers, key political decision-makers," he said.
"People change from seeing," he said.
A 2004 report by 250 scientists said the Arctic region was warming twice as fast as the global average and blamed a build-up of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
Mr Stoere noted that US Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, both seen as possible candidates for the White House in 2008, visited the islands in 2004.
