American billionaire George Soros says wide disagreements over climate-change financing for poor countries "could actually wreck" the Copenhagen climate conference.
The investor-philanthropist says the US$10-billion-a-year, three-year proposal being put forward by richer nations is "not much, it's not sufficient". Developing countries are demanding much more.
Soros on Thursday proposed a partial solution, shifting some of the International Monetary Fund's mission from providing liquidity to stressed financial markets to financing clean-energy projects in developing countries.
But he said US officials told him that opposition in Congress would block such a plan.
On Wednesday, the US and China exchanged barbs at the climate talks, underscoring the suspicion between the world's two largest carbon polluters about the sincerity of their pledges to control emissions.
AP