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LONDON - The United Nations is contemplating a high-level meeting on climate change this year, which could lead to a world summit by 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Financial Times.
The high-level meeting, which could involve ministers and other top delegates, was the most "practical and realistic approach", Ban said in an interview published today.
Such a meeting -- on the margins of the UN General Assembly in New York in September -- "may be able to give some clear guidelines to the December Bali meeting", he said. Ban was referring to a United Nations conference on climate change to be held on the Indonesian resort island.
If September's high-level meeting was a success "a summit level meeting will have to be discussed later on", Ban told the newspaper. "It may be 2008 or 2009."
The FT reported there had been calls for a summit level meeting on climate change at the United Nations in September.
But Ban said: "One difficulty is whether I can see for sure the participation of all the major countries, including the United States".
The UN chief said after attending the annual summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations in June "I may be in a clearer position to propose a certain initiative".
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn, said that Ban had agreed at talks in New York to send envoys to probe government willingness for a high-level meeting about global warming.
- REUTERS
