Using Openquery to access ODBC database

I am using the OPENQUERY to read data from a remote database and insert into SQL Server. The procedure can be quit slow, is there a database paramerter in SQL that allows me to insert records without locking or using a higher blocking factor to increase speed?
The OPENQUERY joins multiple table in the remote database, is this a good idea?
Remote database is Eloquence residing on an HP-UX Itanium machine.

I would suggest first copy the data (if it is small) from remote server to local server using openquery or linked server and then performation the operation what ever you wnat to speed up the process...