day meeting beginning Monday in Montreal, parties to the Kyoto Protocol will discuss climate control steps to be taken starting in 2013. A negotiating mandate or actual treaty, such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, is not expected for another several years. The Kyoto Protocol was seen as the first concrete step toward the goals set in Rio de Janeiro. It sets 2012 as a deadline for industrialized countries to cut emissions of primary greenhouse gases by at least 5 per cent compared from 1990 levels. Nearly 160 countries have ratified the protocol, which took effect in February 2005. The United States, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, was a party to the protocol but pulled out in 2001, when newly elected President George W. Bush declared that the treaty had no chance of passage in the U.S. Senate. --SP 2225 Local Time 1925 GMT
