"We have managed to organise a key meeting... for the nine countries which, each for its own reasons, wants to cooperate with Poland and Hungary" on the issue, Tusk told Polish journalists in Brussels.

He did not say which countries would take part in the mini-summit immediately ahead of a full-scale European summit in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.

However a Lithuanian diplomat said that Poland and Hungary would be joined by the three EU Baltic states, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia.

According to Tusk, the participants will attempt to reduce the obligations they will face under the European climate change and energy plan which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

"I think that this mini-summit which will precede the European summit will strengthen the arguments," he added.

"We will not agree to accepting even a preliminary date to finish work on the package if the (French) presidency's proposal will not fully include our proposals," said Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, secretary of Poland's Committee for European Integration.

Within the EU's current talks on limiting emissions, Poland is calling on Brussels to increase its carbon dioxide emissions cap for its coal-reliant energy utilities and a more gradual introduction of auctioned emissions quotas in order to ease the cost burden.

Dependent on coal-fired power plants for 96 percent of its electricity, Poland has asked the commission for a 2008-2012 carbon dioxide quota of 284.6 million tonnes per year. Brussels reduced it by 26.7 percent to 208.5 million tonnes.

Poland has also proposed a 20-percent carbon dioxide quota auction be introduced in 2013, rising by degrees each year to reach the full 100 percent by 2020.

The EU's original proposal foresees full CO2 emission quota auctions to begin in 2013.

The Lithuanian diplomat stressed that the nine nations involved would also try to set a common position on Russia, which will also be a subject of debate on Wednesday and Thursday.

Two months after the Georgia-Russia conflict, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, could decide to announce the resumption of frozen negotiations with Moscow on a new wide-ranging partnership agreement with the European Union.

The EU suspended the talks last month after Russia recognised the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

However Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic states -- all former Soviet satellites -- want to delay the resumption of the talks to push Moscow to continue the withdrawal of its forces from Georgia.

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