Bali meeting should agree on post-Kyoto timetable: Merkel

She said the UN Climate Conference starting in Bali on Monday needed to agree on a timetable so that negotiations on a follow-up agreement to Kyoto could be completed by the end of 2009.

The Kyoto protocol that went into effect in 2005, requires industrial countries to reduce their carbon emissions by 2012, but the world's two top CO2 polluters, the United States and China, are not bound to fixed reductions under the pact.

Although the US signed the Kyoto protocol, it never ratified it.

China's case is different: as a developing country, it was not bound by the protocol's emissions cap.

The aim of the Bali meeting, which runs until December 14, is to gain consensus on a formal framework for reaching a new emissions-reduction pact over the next two years.

"Every country has to decide for itself, Merkel said. "Germany is ready to set an example."