More from Vaclav Klaus

He's my new hero...I keep asking this, but can't we get him to emigrate to Canada and be our prime minister???

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has criticised Chancellor Angela Merkel for her efforts to fight climate change, saying politicians, journalists and scientists are exploiting an unproven issue for their own advantage.

In an interview to be published in WirtschaftsWoche business magazine in Germany on Monday, Klaus said many world leaders had privately congratulated him for doubting whether climate change was man-made in a Sept. 24 speech to a U.N. conference.

"The unfair and irrational debate about global warming really annoys me," said Klaus, a leading climate change sceptic.

"The issue is increasingly turning into the fundamental ideological conflict of our times. The climate protection movement represents a new ideology."

Ahead of a U.N. climate panel meeting starting on Monday, Klaus compared it to the East-West conflict of the Cold War.

He said he was surprised Merkel, a physicist who grew up in communist East Germany, would fall for such an idea without making a "critical examination of a controversial hypothesis". Merkel has taken a leading role in fighting climate change.

"She's lived in a socialist society and she knows the dangers of ideologies that are aimed against freedom," said Klaus, whose Sept. 24 climate conference speech may also have hurt the Czech Republic's bid for a U.N. Security Council seat.

"Utopia is an excellent escape for politicians because they can busy themselves with far-away goals and don't have to worry about immediate problems," added Klaus. "Climate change is an excellent issue for that escape."

Klaus said many world leaders privately congratulated him for his sceptical remarks but he did not want to name them.

"I'm not alone," he said. "I didn't get applause for my speech at the New York climate conference. But afterwards many government leaders came to me and congratulated me. They said 'that was important, someone has to say it'. Evidently you need to be brave to speak up against climate policies."