VIENNA (Reuters):

Industrial nations agreed to consider stiff 2020 goals for cutting greenhouse gases yesterday in a small step towards a new climate pact to replace the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol.

Delegates at the 158-nation August 27-31 meeting stuck a compromise deal noting leading climate scientists say cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels are needed by 2020 to slow global warming.

The government officials agreed the range "provides useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions".

But it fell short of calls by the European Union and developing nations for the range to be called a stronger indicative "guide" for future work.

Countries including Russia, Japan and Canada had objected to the idea of a guide, reckoning it might end up binding them to make sweeping economic shifts away from fossil fuels, widely seen as a main cause of global warming.

NEW CLIMATE TREATY

Several hundred delegates in the Vienna conference hall applauded for 10 seconds after adopting the compromise text by consensus in a move towards a new climate treaty to extend Kyoto after a first period ending in 2012.

"This is a small step," Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the EU Commission delegation, told Reuters. "We wanted bigger steps. But I think the 25-40 per cent will be viewed as a starting point, an anchor for further work."

"The lower the stabilisation level (of greenhouse gases) achieved, the lower the consequent damages," the deal said.

WIDER KYOTO

Kyoto binds 36 industrial nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 in a first bid to contain warming that could bring more floods, desertification, disease and raise sea levels.

The U.N. talks are also seekingways to widen Kyoto beyond 2012 to include outsiders such as the United States and big developing economies such as China and India.