Russia steps up pledge for climate action

Expectations for a deal in Copenhagen have slipped to a "political agreement", covering core issues such as cuts in emissions by developed nations and aid to the poor. Time has run out to achieve a legally binding text with U.S. legislation bogged down and China reluctant to commit.

CHINA, U.S.

But countries such as Brazil, South Korea and the United States have shown increased willingness to take action in recent days. US President Barack Obama said on Tuesday Copenhagen should cut a deal with "immediate operational effect".

Cuts announced so far by the rich fall far short of the average 25 to 40 % below 1990 levels for developed nations outlined in one scenario by the U.N. climate panel to avoid the worst of droughts, heatwaves, rising sea levels.

Brazil's Presdient Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit that rich nations "talk a lot but do little."

He also said: "We have to prevent the US laying the blame on China and vice versa - they both use this to escape their own responsibility."

"Together we can put pressure on China and the US," he said of leaders planning to go to the Copenhagen talks. US.

President Barack Obama, visiting China from November 15-18, says he will go to Denmark if he can help clinch a deal.

In London, a U.N. report said that women bear the brunt of the harmful impacts of global warming but are mostly ignored in the debate over how to halt it.

In its 2009 state of the world population report, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) said the world's poor are the most vulnerable to climate change and the majority of the 1.5 billion people living on USD 1.0 a day or less are women.

And in Paris, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former president who championed France's dependence on nuclear power, took a tilt at wind turbines by saying they were blighting France.

"The French landscape is one of the world's most beautiful but it's sensitive, fragile," said Giscard, 83 years old. "When I was President I tried to protect it.