Speaking to environment ministers from around the world at the annual UN climate change conference in Argentina's capital, the chief of the UN framework agreement on climate change, Joke Waller-Hunter, sung the praises of the Kyoto Protocol set to take effect in February.

The 1997 Kyoto accord commits 39 industrial nations and territories to trim their output of six greenhouse gases -- especially carbon dioxide -- by 2012 compared with 1990 levels.

Ratification by Russia last month gave the protocol the final stamp of approval needed for it to take effect from February 16.

The United States signed Kyoto's framework -- a declaration of principles -- in 1997 after four years of tough negotiations but then said it would not ratify the protocol.

US President George W. Bush, in one of his first acts after taking office, declared in March 2001 that it would be too costly for the United States to meet its reduced emissions targets.

He also said Kyoto was unfair because China and India, as developing countries that were also becoming polluters, were not required to make targeted emissions cuts.

Waller-Hunter, however, warned that a decade of action to counter a problem that will lost decades, indeed centuries, can only be a first step.

And UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in a message read to the conference, added: "I urge you also to look ahead, beyond the Protocol, which takes only to the year 2012."

"We will need to do even more to mitigate the impacts of climate change. Indeed, without adequate mitigation, adaptation will become an insurmountable task," Annan said.

Kirchner did not name the United States but the object of his criticim was clear.

"We cannot accept that entire societies should be condemned to extinction simply because in another plece in the world people will not agree to make the necessary effort," the Argentine president said.

Kirchner said no one should accept the "two-faced demanding of strict compliance from developing countries on financial commitments related to foreign debt while more evolved and powerful societies avoid the basic commitment to preserving life, seen in this convention and the Kyoto Protocol."

The United States is the world's single largest polluter producing 25 percent of greenhouse gases.

And Washington sees it as "premature" to take up the post-2012 issue, arguing it will take its own approach to combat rising global temperatures and use new technologies to do so.

In Rome Italian Environment Minister Altero Matteoli was quoted on Wednesday as saying the Kyoto Treaty may have to die a natural death after 2012 and be replaced by bilateral deals if the United States and big developing countries reject specific promises to curb greenhouse-gas pollution.

Matteoli said it was important to find a strategy to include the United States in "international efforts to cut emissions," press reports said.

He also favoured a new accord in which populous developing countries would be included for targeted commitments on controlling pollution.

Matteoli said Italy could consider talks on bilateral, rather than multilateral, climate change agreements and similar thinking was emerging in Britain and France.

"We will have to see what stances the emerging countries take towards those who are outside the protocol," he said, referring to a conference on the treaty in Buenos Aires.

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