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   THE EU has laid into the US and Australia, the only two major industrialised countries to reject the Kyoto Protocol, as UN scientists prepared a report likely to issue grim warnings about climate change.European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas pointedly characterised the US as number one emitter of fossil-fuel pollution in the world.

Its own approach doesn't help in reaching international agreement, Mr Dimas said as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) meeting got underway.Mr Dimas upbraided Australia, accusing it of having a negative attitude on international negotiations and of rejecting the UN's emissions-cutting pact on the grounds of politics rather than economics. I can really not understand why Australia has not ratified Kyoto.

If you ratify Kyoto it will cost you one third of what it costs you now...it's purely political. Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said at the opening that unpopular measures are unavoidable to avoid wrenching damage to Earth's climate system.

It's up to the politicians ndash; all politicians of all countries ndash; to take those measures, because you can't let this happen. The 400-member IPCC is to issue a 1400-page report on Friday on the impacts of climate change, along with a key summary for policymakers .It will list the shifts that have been seen in Earth's climate system in the past decades as a result of global warming and make predictions about further changes this century.

The report is the second in a three-volume update of knowledge about climate change under the IPCC, which gathers top minds in climate science, biodiversity, economics and other fields.The IPCC was set up in 1988 with the task of providing neutral, objective information about global warming and its effects.The Kyoto Protocol is the only international agreement to set a target of reducing carbon pollution ndash; mainly the by-product of burning fossil fuels ndash; that drives global warming.

But the treaty has been almost crippled by the absence of the US, which abandoned the treaty in March 2001 in one of US President George W.Bush's first acts in office.Mr Bush said the US commitments under Kyoto, to which his predecessor Bill Clinton had agreed, were too costly for the US economy.

He also said the accord was unfair, as only industrialised countries ndash; and not fast-growing large developing countries such as China and India ndash; are required to make targeted emissions cuts.Australia has followed the US in refusing to ratify Kyoto and is similarly pushing for bilateral, regional and technical co-operation for tackling climate change.Kyoto's supporters have long suspected that this approach aims at weakening support for the treaty, whose renegotiation is coming up.

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