"Climate protection will play a role at the summit in Heiligendamm," she told a press conference after meeting with captains of industry in Berlin to discuss climate change.

"I hope that the summit will send a clear signal with an eye to the negotiations in Indonesia and what we will do once the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012."

A new accord on limiting emissions which contribute to global warming is meant to be thrashed out at a major UN meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali in December.

The United States has refused to adopt Kyoto, arguing that the economic cost of implementing its guidelines would be crippling, while the treaty also left out emerging nations like India and China with its abundance of coal-fired power plants.

A UN conference is underway in Bonn in western Germany to discuss ways of bringing the United States and major developing nations into the new treaty to be negotiated in Bali.

Merkel said it was also essential to include major polluting industries in climate negotiations and to do so sooner rather than later.

"We do not want to wait forever to do this. Politics and business should work together, they are not two opposing forces," said the chancellor, whose efforts to cut greenhouse gases have at times met with opposition from Germany's powerful automobile lobby.

The business leaders she met included the bosses of power generation company Vattenfall Europe and German mail order company Otto Group who said industry also wanted clear, binding guidelines on cutting emissions.

"We need a long-term, sustainable framework that will tie in nations like the United States as well as India, China and Brazil," Michael Otto said.

Leaders of the Group of Eight most industrialised nations will meet in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm from June 6-8.

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