The Obama administration leaned heavily on Saudi Arabia to associate itself with the Copenhagen Accord climate change agreement, confidential State Department memos show and The New York Times reports.

Go to Blog .The handful of climate-related cables -- among the hundreds of thousands of secret and unclassified messages released by the whistle-blower organization Wikileaks -- show the United States put climate change at the center of its foreign policy relationship with the oil-producing giant in the months after last year's blowout U.N. climate summit in Denmark.

"You have the opportunity to head off a serious clash over climate change," James Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she prepared for a February visit to the kingdom.

"Saudi officials are very concerned that a climate change treaty would significantly reduce their income just as they face significant costs to diversify their economy," Smith wrote. "The King is particularly sensitive to avoid Saudi Arabia being singled out as the bad actor, particularly on environmental issues."

And in a memo summarizing the trip of Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman to Saudi Arabia in January, Smith wrote that Feltman urged the country to send a formal notice to the United Nations indicating its acceptance of the climate pact.

Read the entire story at nytimes.com