Gore says global climate deal will be reached

Former US vice-president Al Gore has said he believes a global climate deal would be agreed in Copenhagen later this year because a "political tipping point" had been reached.

Gore, who won an Oscar for his 2006 climate change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", said he believed the support of world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, and many business leaders, had given political momentum to the issue.

Tackling the global economic crisis would provide a framework for a climate deal, he was reported as saying in the Guardian newspaper.

"There is a very impressive consensus now emerging around the world that the solutions to the economic crisis are also the solutions to the climate crisis," Gore was quoted as saying.

"I actually think we will get an agreement at Copenhagen."

He said he had held private talks with Obama last December in which they reportedly discussed the "green" components of the $787 billion U.S. stimulus package.

Nearly 200 nations will meet in Copenhagen at the end of the year to try to seal a new international climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.