PORT OF SPAIN Sat Nov 28, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) – Commonwealth leaders will lobby for an international climate deal that includes $10 billion for next year to help poor and vulnerable states fight the effects of global warming.

Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, whose small Indian Ocean state risks being swamped by rising sea levels caused by climate change, said the proposal for such funding was part of a draft climate statement to be issued on Saturday by Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad and Tobago.

The meeting is the last major world forum before the global summit on climate change in Copenhagen beginning December 7.

"The Commonwealth is going to call for a reliable adaptation fund of $10 billion for next year, and 10 percent of that earmarked for small islands," Nasheed told Reuters in Port of Spain.

"We've just finalised the draft and I believe that the Commonwealth is going to adopt that," he added.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy had earlier proposed a multi billion-dollar fund that would quickly channel money to poor states to help them counter global warming.

It's a move that Bangladesh, as another of the most vulnerable countries and the most vocal in pushing for such a fund, will welcome.

But Bangladesh's prime minister Sheikh Hasina stressed that climate funds must be distinct from existing or future Official Development Assistance to poor nations.

She also told Commonwealth heads in Port of Spain that Least Developed Countries are facing the worst impacts of climate change although they have made negligible contributions to global warming.

Hasina said the major carbon emitters among developed countries must play a vital role to face the global challenges caused by global warming.

Nearly half the Commonwealth members are island states like the Maldives or low-lying nations like Bangladesh, threatened by rising sea levels.

"We face a climate emergency: we cannot wait until 2013 to begin taking action," Gordon Brown told the opening session of the summit earlier Friday.

He proposed the $10 billion-a-year fund to help developing countries battle the effects of global warming. Nicolas Sarkozy made a similar proposal and called for an "ambitious global accord" on climate.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ban Ki-moon, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and Sarkozy attended the summit of the 53-nation Commonwealth as special guests to lobby on Friday for international consensus on a climate pact.

"The need for money on the table -- that is what we want to achieve in Copenhagen," Rasmussen told a news conference later.

He termed the climate fund proposal a "Copenhagen launch fund" that will help poor states to counter global warming and adapt their development models to requirements to reduce carbon pollution.

Ban and Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who will host the Dec 7-18 UN climate talks, hailed what they portrayed as a growing international momentum toward a pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions and limit global warming.

Ban Ki-moon said an agreement was "within reach".

The accord the United Nations is aiming for in Copenhagen would cover tougher emissions targets, climate financing for poorer nations and transfer of clean-energy technology.

The climate treaty, now expected to be adopted as a final text next year, rather than in December, will replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

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