Negotiations is running out of time to launch a binding successor to Kyoto Protocol before it expires by the end of 2012.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres issued this warning at the opening of the UN climate talks in Bonn in preparation for the two-week UN climate conference to be held in Durban, South Africa starting 28 November.

"We add US $1 trillion to the cost of tackling climate change with every year of delay," Figueres told the more than 3,000 participants from 183 countries who attended the conference.

A key issue in the talks is the global negotiations for a new binding agreement which will replace the Kyoto Protocol that will expire at the end of 2012.

So far, negotiations have stalled amid differences between developing and industrialized countries.

The Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 binds almost 40 developed countries to emission cuts from 2008-2012 in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the culprit for global warming.

The big nations, Russia, Japan and Canada don't want to extend the Kyoto treaty to the so-called second commitment period unless the two biggest emitters, China and the U.S., including India and Brazil, accept the agreement.

China, the biggest carbon emitter, is considered a developing country and not bound to make targeted emission cuts.

At last Thursday's G8 meeting US President Barack Obama, confirmed Washington would not join an updated Kyoto Protocol. The US had been saying that they will not enter the negotiating table unless China will be bound to an emission cut.

The US signed the protocol in 1997 but in 2001 then president, George W. Bush, did not put it to the Senate for ratification.

Figueres also insisted this week that the aim of the negotiations is that thatcountries should hold warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Negotiators consider this a tougher goal than what was agreed in Cancun last year which seeks to limit the temperature to a rise of no more than 2 degrees.

Last week, Paris-based International Energy Agency reported that 2010 emissions from global energy generation reached record-high.

Also, Hawaii-based Mauna Loa laboratory, a key scientific monitor for global climate change, reported that carbon dioxide concentrations peaked again in May.

"Now more than ever, it is critical that all efforts are mobilized towards living up to this commitment," she said at the opening session in Bonn.

Figueres said that in Cancun countries committed to a maximum global average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius, "with further consideration of a 1.5 degree maximum."

The EU which is on schedule to meet its binding goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent in 2020 compared with 1990 levels, said it's ready to move to a 30 percent target provided other developed countries follow suit. #30