New York - French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday stressed the need for a global organization on the environment so that countries could fight climate change. Sarkozy met with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at a working lunch for wide-ranging discussions on global issues, with climate change topping the agenda.
We will fight climate change hand in hand, Sarkozy said at the meeting, which came after the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy, and several weeks before the United Nations General Assembly and G20 meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The key decision of the G8 summit was an agreement that world efforts should be directed towards limiting global warming to 2 degrees centigrade above eighteenth-century levels, to prevent catastrophic climate and weather changes around the world.
Ban said he was grateful for Sarkozy's "full commitment to work together to seal the deal in Copenhagen on a globally acceptable" climate change agreement.
At an international conference on climate change in Copenhagen in December, governments are to agree on goals to fight climate change under a new Kyoto Protocol. The current protocol will expire in 2012.
Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, are to attend a fund- raising concert in New York Saturday to celebrate former South African president Nelson Mandela's 91st birthday.
