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 called 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.

Failure to act now could have "catastrophic" consequences later, it said in a veiled attack on the policies of US President George W. Bush.

"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.

"Personally I am for targets, but when they are set at the right moment," he told a news conference.

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.

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

The EU intends to raise climate change at summit talks here with Bush on February 21, with Dimas welcoming what he said were signs of re-engagement by the US administration on the issue.

Jan Kowalzig of Friends of the Earth said the EU should not shy away from delivering a tough message to the world's biggest polluter at the summit.

"The commission's new strategy should be acted on straight away. The plan says that investing in emission cuts today means paying less for climate disaster tomorrow. This includes the United States," he said.

The omission of big developing nations from Kyoto's requirements is shaping up to be another major controversy going forward.

"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.

The document did not embrace one intensely controversial means of tackling climate change, by dumping CO2 in underground reserves.

But a spokeswoman for Dimas said: "We're not excluding any sector for the moment."

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