The outcomes of two international meetings next month may determine whether the Kyoto Protocol lasts even one full year into its five-year commitment period that starts in January.

The first is the Apec summit of Asia-Pacific leaders to be held in Sydney, at which climate change is expected to be top of the agenda.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who will chair the forum, has asked his Apec counterparts to consider how the 21 member countries can support an "emerging practical consensus on a global framework for tackling climate change".

Apec includes the world's two largest greenhouse gas emitters - the United States and China - and Howard has proposed a model in which countries set their own objectives in a range of areas which affect climate change, rather than compulsory targets.

Greenpeace has made public details of a leaked Apec draft communique suggested by the US. The draft does not mention targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but instead proposes solutions based entirely on "new clean technologies" rather than on changes in the way people lead their lives.

The second meeting, in Washington on September 27 and 28, involves the countries that are the major emitters of greenhouse gases.

The object of the meeting is to extend the goals for reducing emissions. It will take place just a few days after a United Nations meeting on September 24 to discuss climate change. That meeting will also develop a new agreement on greenhouse gas limits to take effect when the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012.

Environmental groups have called this planned meeting - proposed by US President George Bush in May - a diversion from other international efforts to address global warming and climate change. But the White House says the meeting will complement the one at the UN.

The countries which have been invited to the Washington meeting are Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and South Korea. Bush has also invited a delegation from Europe, and representatives from the UN. New Zealand, which produces only 0.14 per cent of the world's anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions is nowhere near a big enough player to be invited.

Bush has said he wants to take a leadership role in tackling climate change, with a strategy based on new technologies but without setting caps on emissions by various countries. He proposes that the major emitters should draw up a framework on climate change that goes beyond the Kyoto Protocol's commitment period.