BANGKOK, October 5, 2009 (AFP) - China and a bloc of developing nations Monday accused rich countries of trying to kill off the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty in force that fights global warming.

"We now hear statements and actions that will lead to a termination of the Kyoto protocol and everything that it represents," Yu Qingtai, China's ambassador for climate change, said during a news conference.

Yu lashed out in Bangkok, where 180 nations are trying to lay the framework for a global climate deal in Copenhagen in December that would take over when the current provisions of the Kyoto Protocol run out in 2012.

"It's just like the final five minutes into a game in which one side is putting forward a set of new rules ... and expects the other side to agree.

"That is not a fair way of conducting negotiations," he told journalists.

The world's nations vowed nearly two years ago to hammer out a new global agreement by the end of 2009 to slash drastically the heat-trapping greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

Emerging giants such as China and developing countries say the new agreement should strengthen Kyoto, under which 37 highly industrialised nations took on hard commitments for cutting carbon dioxide pollution between 2008 and 2012.

The United States signed the treaty in 1992 but never ratified it, and thus was exempt from its provisions.

In Bangkok, several nations -- notably the United States, Australia and Japan -- have floated proposals calling for an approach in which each country would make its own national commitments.

These would be measurable and verifiable, but outside any kind of internationally enforceable compliance regime.

Rich nations have suggested that poorer countries, which had no Kyoto obligations, could make efforts to curb carbon dioxide output in keeping with their level of development under such a scheme.

China was not alone in calling instead for beefing up Kyoto, which could exist along with whatever other measures might be adopted at the climate conference in Copenhagen.

At the same press conference, Sudan's Lumumba D'Aping, who heads the so-called "G77 plus China" bloc, called on developed countries to say clearly that they were not out to "kill the Kyoto Protocol."

In a UNFCCC session in June, Indian climate negotiator Shyam Saran also warned against attempts to undermine the existing treaty.

"We are not negotiating a new Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol does not cease to exist in 2012 and will remain valid and in effect until such time as the state parties decide to abrogate it or amend it or decide to replace it with another legal instrument," he said.