WASHINGTON, Sept 27: US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday declared climate change to be a “real and growing problem” that should be resolved under the UN at the start of a forum of major polluters viewed warily by defenders of the Kyoto Protocol.

“We have come together today because we agree that climate change is a real and growing problem – and that human beings are contributing to it,” Rice said in her opening address.

“I want to stress that the United States takes climate change very seriously, for we are both a major economy and a major emitter. We do not think of ourselves as standing above or apart from the international community on this issue.” The two-day talks kick off a 15-month process under which the 16 participating economies will sketch targets for reducing their emissions, examine the possibility of a long-term goal and look at ways of harnessing the power of business and new technology to tackle their pollution, according to a US proposal.

The process was launched by President George W. Bush, whose country is the world’s number emitter of greenhouse gases, and who has been savaged abroad for abandoning the UN’s Kyoto Protocol in 2001.So his initiative has been clouded by suspicions, especially in Europe, that he wants to undermine efforts to strengthen Kyoto and instead cobble together a voluntary, unambitious deal among an elite club of carbon emitters.—AFP