BRUSSELS, Feb 9: The European Union executive came under fire on Wednesday for unveiling a new strategy against climate change for the post-Kyoto era that fails to spell out targets to cut greenhouse gases.

Just a week before the Kyoto Treaty takes effect, the European Commission looked ahead to the period after 2012 when the agreement lapses with a new set of proposals to curb the warming of the Earth.

The document calls for new technologies and greater international cooperation to tackle climate change, above all by engaging the United States and major developing nations such as China and India.

"Fighting climate change is not a matter of choice, but a matter of necessity," EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said.

"We will continue to lead by example, but we will also continue to pressure hard for all of our international partners to come on board," he said.

Environmentalists attacked Brussels for, in their view, abandoning European leadership on the issue by omitting any mention of legally binding targets for emission reductions in its new strategy.

"The January sales are over, but the commission is still cheapening its leadership of the EU battle against climate change," Greenpeace campaigner Mahi Sideridou said.

Dimas retorted that it was too early to propose binding targets with Kyoto only just taking force and emerging economies not yet part of a future framework for negotiations.

"We would not like to scare off certain countries with targets at this moment. We would like to find a way to discuss with them and get them into a negotiation," he told a news conference. "Personally I am for targets, but when they are set at the right moment."

Kyoto is due to expire in 2012. Talks for a follow-on agreement start next year, and under the treaty's terms major players like Europe are supposed to come up with ideas this year.

The 1997 Kyoto accord legally committed 39 industrial nations and territories to trim their output of six greenhouse gases - especially carbon dioxide (CO2) - by 2012 compared with 1990 levels.

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

The United States signed Kyoto's framework in 1997 but President George W. Bush, in one of his first acts after taking office, abandoned the accord in March 2001 on the grounds that it would be too costly for US industry. 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.

Developing countries under Kyoto have to promise to do their best not to follow industrialised countries down the path towards greenhouse-gas pollution, but are not legally bound.

That omission is shaping up to be a key bone of contention in the post-Kyoto age as industrialized nations press for major developing nations to be brought on board the anti-global warming effort.

"In order to have real results, we should have the United States in, we should have China, we should have India - all these countries that are going to contribute 75 percent (of greenhouse gases)," Dimas said.

The commission strategy, which will be debated by EU environment ministers on March 10, reaffirms the bloc's intention to cap global warming at 2.0 degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

An intensified use of emissions trading between countries is foreseen as a central plank of the strategy to curb CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

More sectors such as aviation, maritime transport and forestry should also be brought into a post-Kyoto deal, Brussels argued.-AFP