* Arctic nations to cut down on soot that hastens melt

* Eight nations snub requests for more observer states

* China, Italy, South Korea, European Commission snubbed

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

TROMSOE, Norway, April 29 (Reuters) - Arctic nations agreed on Wednesday to crack down on soot that is darkening ice around the North Pole and hastening a thaw that they also blamed on global warming.

The eight-member Arctic Council, ending a two-day meeting in Norway, also snubbed requests by China, Italy, South Korea and the European Commission for wider involvement in the eight-member club that is becoming more important as ice retreats.

Council foreign ministers agreed to set up a "task force" to examine ways to cut down on soot -- caused by sources such as diesel fumes, forest fires or by grass burnt by farmers -- along with two other short-lived greenhouse gases.

The task force would "recommend further immediate actions that can be taken" and report back on progress at a next meeting in 2011, according to a final statement by the United States, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Norway in the Arctic city of Tromsoe in Norway.

Soot darkens ice and allows it to soak up more heat, accelerating climate change stoked by carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas released by burning fossil fuels. Technology to clean up soot emissions is cheap and easily available.

"New research shows that these common pollutants have contributed almost as much to temperature rises in the Arctic over the past century as carbon dioxide emissions," said Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.

Cleaning the air could allow ice -- from the Arctic Ocean in summer to Alpine glaciers -- to survive, so that harder to achieve cuts in carbon dioxide could have an impact under a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed in December, Stoere said.

The Council said it was "deeply concerned" by melting and said human-induced climate change was one of the greatest challenges facing the Arctic.

SHRINKING ICE

A thaw of the Arctic, where ice shrank in the summer of 2007 to its smallest surface on record, is disrupting livelihoods of indigenous peoples but may bring business opportunities such as for oil and gas exploration or trans-Arctic shipping.

The Council put off until 2011 a decision on whether to grant a bigger role to outsiders.

China, Italy, South Korea and the European Commission had applied to become "permanent observers" in Norway, giving them a more formal role than now when they have to apply to come to every meeting.

Canada said a wider review of observers was needed, accusing some European states of failing to understand the needs of northern indigenous peoples, such as in seal hunting. The European Union is discussing an import ban on seal products.

"Our feeling is that there has been a great deal of incomprehension, even insensitivity, in understanding the seal hunt," Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon told a news conference.

Britain, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Poland already attend as Arctic Council permanent observers. Some nations fear that more observers could radically change the Council, long a diplomatic backwater.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also said that Moscow had no plans to step up military forces in the Arctic, except for a coastguard presence, as the ice melts. The Arctic is thawing trice as fast as the rest of the globe amid warming.

"We are not planning any increase in our armed forces in the Arctic," he said.

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on: http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/ (Editing by Richard Meares)

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