Gore Wants Regular Summits On Global Warming

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The world's top leaders should meet every three months, starting next year, until a plan is drawn up to reduce emissions blamed for global warming, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said on Monday.

Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue since leaving the White House, told a U.N. meeting that presidents and prime ministers should go to Bali this year for talks on a follow-up pact to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out in 2012.

Traditionally, environment ministers or lower-level negotiators attend the annual UN climate change talks, but Gore said leaders should go from now on and then have follow-up meetings.

"I would like to propose...that the heads of state around the world call an emergency session of this gathering for the beginning of next year to review the results of Bali," he said.

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They should "continue to meet at the head of state level every three months until a treaty is successfully arrived at," Gore said. "We cannot continue business as usual."

The Kyoto Protocol requires 36 industrial nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations pledged in June to find a follow-up deal for Kyoto by 2009.

Reaching an agreement will not be easy, however. The United States -- which did not ratify Kyoto -- has long resisted binding emissions targets, while Europe insists that mandatory limits are the only way to effectively fight climate change.

President George W. Bush, who defeated Gore in the 2000 presidential election, did not attend the U.N. climate change meeting but was slated to attend a dinner with other leaders to discuss the subject on Monday night.