Brende said some countries were already working on such a project to be launched prior to 2005.

"Our ambition is to have a system in place by 2005. Sweden is talking about 2003-2004," Brende was quoted as saying.

Norway's past two governments have been studying such a scheme without any results. The overall plan would be to integrated it with a larger international market for the right to pollute as part of a U.N. plan to combat global warming.

Brende, who will attend a new round of U.N. climate talks in Morocco this week, reckoned the announcement of a greenhouse gas emissions quota system by March was no easy task.

Within industry there are different opinions about whether to go for quota trading now or whether voluntary agreements to reduce emissions would be the best way. The European Commission has said that it wanted the 15 EU states to ratify the so-called Kyoto protocol on curbing greenhouse gases, agreed by more than 180 states in July, before a world environment summit in Johannesburg in September 2002.

More than 180 nations agreed to push ahead with the Kyoto pact at a meeting in Bonn in July after the United States, the world's top polluter, refused to sign up. The pact aims to cut emissions of gases that scientists say are raising temperatures.

In parallel, a free market for trading the permits would be set up.

Emission trading quotas enables countries or big polluters like coal-fired power plants the possibility to buy the rights to emit climate gases.