By Joydeep Gupta
Copenhagen, Dec 14 (IANS) With 45,215 participants registered and 22,387 of them inside the Bella Centre most of the day, the sprawling venue of the Dec 7-18 climate summit is stretched to the limit.

The 7,400 secretariat staff and security personnel were Monday struggling to cope with the 11,500 representatives from 192 governments, 3,487 journalists and 22,274 observers and NGO representatives.

Those who did not make it inside early in the morning had an average wait of five hours in the zero-degree weather outside, with the queues snaking beyond the nearest Metro station that just about everybody uses to get here.

Now the organisers have announced they will not let in more than 1,000 NGO representatives at any one time, leading to much heartburn among the activists and a scramble for the extra badges that will allow them to observe and, maybe, influence the outcome of this summit as the governments bicker over carbon emissions and levels of their intensity.

The police in Denmark - bolstered by their colleagues in Germany - are getting increasingly nervous as the first of 120 heads of state and government are scheduled to arrive Tuesday.

The nerves showed during the NGO day of protest last Saturday, when 970 of the 100,000 marchers were arrested, handcuffed and made to squat on a cold road for over six hours, according to local media reports.

These reports also say the police have rented an entire warehouse as well as cages inside it, to house activists they arrest.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) executive secretary Yvo de Boer, however, said: “Demonstrations certainly have an impact. They are a huge encouragement to leaders not to just talk but to act.”