By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN, Dec 2 (Reuters) - Climate change is already causing friction and international instability in some parts of the world but looms as an even greater threat to peace in the future, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

In an interview with Reuters before Monday's start of the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Steinmeier said those talks need to move the issue of global warming beyond the melting glaciers to more immediate, if less photogenic, perils.

He said it was time to look at tensions already being caused by the dwindling of natural resources, diminishing access to fresh water, shifts in vegetation and mass migration as well as the future conflicts that loom because of climate change.

Steinmeier also said it was vital that none of the world's leading nations opt out of any agreement reached in the talks to be launched in Bali, designed to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a pact to curb global warming that runs to 2012.

"Bali is only the start of a long process yet I truly hope the delegates will be able to agree on medium- and long-term goals to slow global warming," said Steinmeier, who often speaks out on the foreign policy implications of climate change.

"I hope no one will leave Bali having distanced themselves from the process. If ... a timetable for realistic negotiations can be set up, then I'd say the aims and purpose of Bali will have been accomplished."

Delegates from nearly 190 countries meet on the Indonesian island from Dec. 3 to 14. The aim is to launch a concentrated effort to agree on a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol by 2009.

The United States and developing nations such as China and India have no limits on emissions under Kyoto. Washington wants a new deal agreed at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.

BEYOND MELTING ICEBERGS

"What we don't need from Bali is another ringing of the catastrophe alarms," said Steinmeier, who helped Chancellor Angela Merkel prod the United States and other key industrial allies to agree at Germany's G8 summit in Heiligendamm on the need for "substantial" cuts in emissions and a 2009 U.N. deal.

"We need to move beyond the reports of melting icebergs -- everyone's aware of that by now. People know the problem is serious. The delegates can now get to work on the problem. There's no need for a media showcase to convince anyone."

Steinmeier said climate change is reducing access to water and changing vegetation patterns, causing tension in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.

"I run into the same problems in a lot of places," he said.

Steinmeier said the planting of a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole was a harbinger of potential troubles.

"The struggle for natural resources in the wake of climate change has become visible even at the North Pole," he said, noting a few years ago no one thought it would be possible to exploit the previously inaccessible seabed below Arctic ice.

Denmark also claims part of the Arctic through its Greenland province. International law states five nations with a coastline in the Arctic -- including Canada, the United States, Norway -- have a 320 km (200 mile) economic zone north of their shore.

"From a technological standpoint it's still a challenging prospect but climate change has fired the imagination of engineers and that's had a political impact. It woke people up.

"You see a growing nervousness. For me that proves there must be some truth to the thesis that access to resources, especially energy, could upset international relations.

"I'm not talking about war but ruptures. There is a risk divergent interests can lead to conflict. That's why we must help now to prevent future disputes. There's still time." (Editing by Tim Pearce)

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