Gore and UN climate scientist meet Norwegian leaders, media before Nobel peace prize ceremony

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations' chief climate scientist met Norwegian leaders early Sunday to kick off the official program leading up to them accepting the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo on Monday.

Gore and the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shared the coveted award for their efforts to draw the world's attention to the dangers of global warming.

When he arrived on Friday, Gore urged countries meeting at a climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to speed up work on a strong climate treaty to replaces the current Kyoto accords. The governments hope to finish drafting a new climate treaty by 2009, with a current target of 2012 for ratification, but Gore urged them to move the ratification deadline ahead by two years.

Gore and chief U.N. climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who will represent the intergovernmental panel at the awards ceremony, met Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and Environment and Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim at the laureates downtown hotel on Sunday morning.

After the meeting, Stoere said they discussed "how the attention drawn by the Nobel prize and the expertise found on the climate panel and be translated into political action."

The meeting marks the start of three days of celebrations of the 2007 Nobel peace laureates, which include a news conference on Sunday, the awards ceremony on Monday, followed by a parade and banquet in the winners' honor, and the traditional Nobel peace concert on Tuesday.

As the meeting was starting on a day of snow showers in Oslo, 3-year-old Haakon Gulowsen, the son of Greenpeace Norway leader Truls Gulowsen, gave Gore a single white flower called a wood anemone that had been found growing wild in the capital during winter, even though it usually blossoms in the spring.

"It's extremely rare that it would blossom now," the father told the AP. "It seems to be confused by the climate. .... We gave it as a symbol."

The Nobel prizes are always presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of the death of their creator, Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel. The peace prize is presented in Oslo and the other prizes are handed out in Stockholm, Sweden.

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