(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-08 17:13

AID

And the small islands said they would need far more aid. "The infrastructure needs alone of the most vulnerable countries could measure in the billions" of dollars, Friday said.

The government of the Maldives, for instance, needed $175 million to build a barrier around a single coral island to make the atoll "twice the height of this chair" above sea level, he said.

"We are not in this process as beggars," said Clifford Mahlung of Jamaica, adding that small islands were not to blame for climate change, blamed by the UN climate panel mainly on greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"In Jamaica we used to repair coastal roads from erosion and storms once every four years," he said. "With what is happening now we have to repair those roads four times a year."

Friday said Grenada, long considered south of the Caribbean hurricane belt, had been reclassified after two storms within 10 months in 2004-05. Losses from Hurricane Ivan alone in 2004 were $800 million.

But he also said that small island states had dropped past threats to sue the United States, the top emitter of greenhouse gases, for compensation. "That's not under discussion," he told Reuters.

The United States is outside the UN's Kyoto Protocol, the main plan by industrialised nations for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. But Washington has expressed willingness to join a new climate pact that includes developing nations.

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