Britain urges divided G20 to reach climate deal

By Toni Vorobyova and Anna Willard

ST ANDREWS (Reuters) - British finance minister Alistair Darling urged his G20 counterparts on Saturday to work toward a $100 billion deal to tackle climate change but developing nations insisted they did not want to talk about it.

Britain is hosting the third meeting of Group of 20 finance ministers and central bankers this year in St Andrews, Scotland, and is determined to push forward on an ambitious target to meet the costs of climate change by 2020, ahead of a major environmental summit in Copenhagen next month.

"It really is imperative that when we reach the end of the day that we have shown that we have made some real progress," Darling said at the start of talks on Saturday.

"If there isn't an agreement on finance ... then the Copenhagen agreement is going to be much, much more difficult."

But there appeared to be little chance of a breakthrough with many emerging countries questioning whether it should even be a topic of discussion at the forum of leading economies, just as they did at a London meeting in September.

"The issue is whether we talk about it or not. Britain is quite motivated on this subject but there are some quite strong objections," a French official said. "The emerging market countries say it should not be discussed for procedural reasons, that the G20 is not the right forum."

German officials predicted no meaningful breakthrough.

"At the moment the talks on financing climate protection seem to be at a dead-end," one German delegation source said, picking out China as obstructing progress.