The Pacific island countries need to draw a strong response strategy to target their particular threats of climate change, said UN climate change negotiator on Wednesday.

In an interview with Xinhua, Yvo De Boer, the executive secretary of climate change secretariat of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the Pacific island countries need to make solid assessments, on a country-by-country basis, on "what threats of climate change, how the climate change likely to affect them."

Climate change tops the agenda of the 40th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, which is underway in the Australian northern city of Cairns.

"I came here to make sure the international negotiation on climate change need to be progressive here," De Boer said on the sidelines of the 40th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, which he is attending as an observer.

De Boer said the Pacific island countries were very concerned about the impact of climate change, and the prime ministers of both Australia and News Zealand have strong support statements on helping the Pacific island countries to deal with climate change.

"It is encouraging," he said, adding that the international community needs to come to an agreement on climate change.

"As the Pacific island countries can not pay their way out of the problem, they need to make absolute clear what their concern are, what solution need to put in place to help them," he said.

On the Climate Conference in Copenhagen scheduled by the end of this year, De Boer said his message to the Forum leader is: "It is not an opportunity we can afford to miss. We do not have much time offered to wait. We need to have a strong response."

De Boer said the industrialized countries need to adopt ambitious targets in Copenhagen and offer financial support to the developing countries.

"A number of these low-lying islands are clearly under threat already," De Boer said.

The Pacific island countries including Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu have coral atolls no more than 3 meters above sea level, and rising oceans are threatening to eat away coastlines, pollute freshwater sources and kill off fruit-bearing trees and other crops.

(Xinhua News Agency August 6, 2009)