The UN environment agency has urged the international community to intensify efforts in cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reversing the trend of global warming.

"Only if the international community maintains and intensifies the political momentum for making the Kyoto Protocol fully operational can we be sure that it will enter into force in time for industrialized countries to achieve their emissions targets," Executive Director of the Nairobi- based UN Environment Program (UNEP) Klaus Toepfer said Monday.

The fate of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries will be determined over the next 12 months, a press report obtained here Tuesday quoted him as saying.

In Bonn last week, ministers and officials from 166 governments set a timetable for completing the outstanding details of the protocol by November 2000.

The Kyoto Protocol will come into force only when at least 55 countries, including a number of developed countries accounting for at least 55 percent of developed country emissions, have ratified.

So far, only 16 countries, all from the developing world, have approved the protocol.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, rich countries are to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by five percent by the period 2008-2012.