2010 Tour de France to start with Rotterdam prologue | Sports | Reuters

Tour director Christian Prudhomme said ASO were seduced by Rotterdam's ambition to use the Tour to develop the use of bicycles in the city.

"We were seduced by their commitment in the fight against global warming, in a global policy aiming to firmly establish cycling in the heart of the city by using the world's greatest race," said Prudhomme.

Vaclav Klaus: 'We will not be campaigners for the climate package' :

Bucharest - The Czech Republic will make no special effort to tackle climate change when it takes over the rotating EU presidency in January, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said on Thursday. "We will not be campaigners for the climate package," Klaus said, during a private visit to the Romanian capital Bucharest, the Romanian news agency Mediafax reported.

He also expressed fears that the global financial crisis would be used as a pretext for curtailing freedoms in the markets.

"The climate is OK," and the problem of global warming was mere "ideology," Klaus said at a book presentation.

The world had had the "same climate for 10,000 years," he said, and a climate catastrophe was impossible. Therefore he was against "radical environmental protection measures."