The talks, which began on December 7, will climax on Friday when around 120 world leaders, including US President Barack Obama, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao gather in the Danish capital.

Little progress was made on key issues in the first six days of negotiations, but the conference geared up on Sunday as environment ministers met for talks. Up to this point, discussions have been limited to officials.

With so many senior figures due in town, Danish police have been quick to tackle disturbances at demonstrations around the conference and have used special preventative detention powers to hold potential troublemakers.

Nearly 1,000 were detained at a protest on Saturday and on Sunday police held 200 at an anti-capitalist event near Copenhagen's port.

"It's like a football match. We get rid of the hooligans so they don't spoil the party for the other spectators," police spokesman Henrik Jakobsen told AFP bluntly.

"Those in the thick of the action should be aware they run the risk of being arrested."

The authorities are backing this muscular approach, which has angered many Danish and foreign protesters.

A new law was passed ahead of the climate conference allowing preventative detention, under which people can be held by police for up to 12 hours.

This was aimed in particular at tackling the so-called Black Blocs, small violent groups who staged violent protests at the NATO summit in Strasbourg, eastern France, in April.

The Danish parliament agreed 620 million kroner (83 million euros, 121 million dollars) of special funding for the police for the conference, which is the "biggest operation the police has staged in recent times", according to one officer.

Jakobsen said those on the march were informed of the special measures, explaining that campaign groups were sent information in five languages outlining the rules in force in Denmark.

One group, Climate Justice Action (CJA) regards the climate talks as useless and is calling for more radical action.

Police broke up a CJA demonstration on Sunday which was aimed at blocking Copenhagen's port in protest at pollution caused by maritime transport companies, detaining around 200 activists.

CJA has called for "civil disobedience ... to make the voice of the people heard" by political leaders and said it plans to disrupt Wednesday's plenary session at the conference. The group said it would act peacefully.

Police were present in huge numbers along the length of Saturday's protest and intervened swiftly when a small group of demonstrators at the back of the procession began throwing rocks, bottles and firecrackers.

Officers held hundreds in a pincer movement and left them sitting on the cold ground in handcuffs for several hours before taking them to a special detention centre near Copenhagen.

A total of 968 people from 26 countries were held, almost all of whom were released overnight.

Only four -- two Danes, a Frenchman and a German -- were charged with violence towards police officers, and they are due before a judge who will rule on detaining them.

"It's completely unacceptable to arrest more than 900 people at random before they have done anything at all, and to leave them for hours on the ground in the cold before putting them in cage-like cells," Anne William of CJA told AFP.

She said the police reaction was "completely disproportionate, unfair and arbitrary" and aimed at criminalising the movement for climate justice.

Ole Tarp, a Danish climate activist who took part in Saturday's demonstration, put the blame on Denmark's lawmakers.

"This law makes us all thugs," he told the TV2 News network. Along with others, he is considering a legal appeal against police tactics which he said "violate our constitutional rights".

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