"With some satisfaction I noted the recent statements of president-elect Obama and our discussions on the changing attitude of the United States on global warming," the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza quoted Ban as saying in an interview published Saturday.

Ban's comments came ahead of the opening of the 14th UN climate conference on Monday in the city of Poznan, in western Poland.

Ban said he was pleased to see that Obama considered the UN climate negotiations a priority and that the next US leader, who takes office in late January, wanted to boost energy efficiency and develop a US system for selling CO2 emission rights.

The UN chief also noted that earlier this month at an international climate meeting in California, despite the current financial crisis, the US spoke about achieving by 2020 a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 levels.

Obama delivered on November 18 a surprise video message to a California climate change meeting, and also mentioned the upcoming UN conference in Poland, in which he vowed to show new US leadership on the issue.

"Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response. The stakes are too high. The consequences, too serious," Obama said.

The December 1-12 forum of 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) aims to hammer out a workable blueprint for negotiations that will culminate in a new worldwide treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Copenhagen accord is intended to succeed the commitments of UNFCCC's troubled Kyoto Protocol after 2012, which was abandoned by President George W. Bush in 2001.

Bush had argued that the accord was too costly to the oil-dependent US economy and unfair, as its binding emissions curbs apply only to rich countries, not developing ones.

All rights reserved. © 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.