KYOTO. Japan. Dec 11: The world's nations approved a landmark agreement early Thursday to reduce fuel emissions by industrial countries in the 21st century to guard the Earth against global warming, reports AP.

After working through the night, delegates held a final session of speechmaking which ended with loud round of applause signalling the formal approval of the pact. They will now take the agreement back to their government for ratification.

The Kyoto Protocol, approved after 11 days of arduous negotiations, will help set an energy course for much of the worla for decades to come.

"The eyes of the world are

upon us now,” chief US negotiator Stuart Eizenstat declared in a contentious post-midnight session of the climate conference. "We have an opportunity to do really something good."

On a final night that stretched far into morning, the future of the carbon-loaded atmosphere hung on the calm click of calculators, as negotiators in conference backrooms set budget periods, apportioned quotas and toted up emissions of the "greenhouse" gases linked to global warming.

Eventually, a grand Euro-pean-US-Japanese compromise took shape: The European Union would reduce its greenhouse emissions by 8 per cent below 1990 levels, the United States by 7 per cent, and Japan

by 6 per cent.

Twenty-one other industrialised countries would meet similar binding targets, and the reductions would be achieved between 2008 and 2012. All are committed to more profound cuts after that.

Altogether, the 38 nations will be cutting greenhouse emissions by slightly more than 5 per cent under 1990 lev-els.

This is a figure that is going to have an impact on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere." said Raul Estrada, chairman of the talks.

Meanwhile. US President Bill Clinton strongly endorsed an agreement of industrial nations to control global warming, saying it was "environmen-

tahy strong and economically aound."

But Clinton expressed regret late Wednesday about the lack of commitment by developing nations to reduce neat-trapping gases.

"I wish it were a little stronger on developing nations' participation," Clinton said. But he said the accord reached in Kyoto. Japan, was "a huge first step. And I did not dream when we started that we could get this far."

The president issued his statement after dozens of nations agreed at a conference in Kyoto to a landmark agreement to reduce fuel emissions by industrial countries in the 21st century.