SEOUL -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper will join more than 50 prime ministers and presidents at the leaders’ summit on climate change in Copenhagen and push for a binding deal to commit the nations to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Canwest News Service has learned.

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change begins in Copenhagen on Monday and culminates on Dec. 17 and 18 with a leaders’ summit.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama changed his travel plans and will now attend the leaders’ meetings. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will also be at the leaders’ meetings.

Harper had said he would attend the conference but had not set a date for his attendance.

Now, Canwest News Service has learned, Harper will be there for the leaders’ summit, although his aides caution that his plans have not yet been finalized.

“The world needs a climate change deal,” Harper said in Shanghai on the weekend during his visit to China.

“The world wants a climate change deal, so I will remain very optimistic that everybody’s moving in the right direction and something will come together in Copenhagen. It may not be everything that everybody wants, but it’s important that we make progress.”

In Copenhagen, Harper will push for a binding deal, although it is still unclear what Canada’s position is on the kind of targets that ought to be in that agreement. Nevertheless, his aides say, he will stress that an agreement must be reached.

“We have to have a deal. We can’t just keep putting it off to the next summit,” one of his closest advisers said.

Scientists say if greenhouse gases are not reduced and the change in global average temperature is not held to less than two degrees Celsius, there could be catastrophic environmental effects, such as prolonged drought, crop failures, floods, and rising sea levels, which will drown some smaller Pacific and Indian Ocean nations.

Harper’s aides also say they are not being distracted by, nor do they want to argue about, the scandal involving some climate-change scientists who, in private e-mail messages that have surfaced over the past few weeks, suggested data supporting the conclusion that man-made pollution is causing climate change were altered or deleted.

“One or two scientists fudging data doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. It’s real,” said one of Harper’s closest advisers.

Canada has been painted by some, notably those in Europe and Great Britain, as “the dirty old man on climate change,” an image many environment activists in Canada blame Harper for. The Harper government rejected the Kyoto Protocol and, despite promises to do so since being elected in 2006, has yet to implement regulations to force Canadian polluters to cut greenhouse gases.

Instead, at almost every international forum where climate change has been discussed for the last three years, Harper has insisted that an effective international deal on climate change must, unlike the Kyoto Protocol, include the United States and China as signatories, as those two countries are the world’s biggest polluters.