The four days of negotiations in Bangkok are the first for the year, kicking off a race to try and achieve consensus on a wide range of hot-button issues in time for a crucial annual UN climate summit in South Africa in November.

In her opening address to the talks, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres warned that breakthroughs made at the last summit in the Mexican resort of Cancun could be jeopardised by the stalemate over the Kyoto Protocol.

"The full implementation of the Cancun agreements can only become an important step forward for the climate if there's a responsible and clear way ahead on the Kyoto Protocol," Figueres said.

Signed in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol saw most developed nations agree to legally binding commitments on curbing their greenhouse gas emissions that are blamed for global warming.

Those commitments are due to expire at the end of 2012 and, if there is to be a second round of legally binding pledges, they would need to be made at the UN's next climate summit in Durban.

But Japan and Russia have firmly opposed extending the protocol because it excludes the world's two biggest polluters -- China and the United States -- and therefore only covers about 30 percent of global emissions.

Australia has also said it would only agree to a second round of commitments if all major emitters were part of the process.

Developing countries, including China, did not have to commit to cutting emissions as part of the Kyoto Protocol and most of them maintain this should remain the case.

Meanwhile, the United States, which refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, has given no indication it would agree to any future legally binding emission reduction commitments.

In the first session of the Bangkok talks, parties gave few signs of changing their positions.

Delegates from a diverse range of developing countries, including China, Tuvalu, Egypt and Venezuela, insisted that rich nations must commit to a second phase of emission reduction commitments at the Durban summit.

The Australian and Japanese delegates, meanwhile, reiterated their countries' positions that all big polluters should have to commit to cutting emissions.

The debate has increased the likelihood of the Kyoto Protocol commitments expiring with only a framework of non-legally binding pledges from most developed and developing countries to fill the void.

Those pledges were made at the Cancun summit.

But developing nations warned this would lead to a greatly diluted global effort to combat climate change involving voluntary targets for rich countries.

"We cannot allow ourselves to move to a weaker structure and a less demanding regime," Venezuelan delegate Claudia Caldera said in her address to the Bangkok forum.

At the Cancun summit, all nations also pledged "urgent action" to keep temperatures from rising no more than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

But Figueres has repeatedly warned those Cancun pledges are not nearly good enough to keep temperatures from rising less than the crucial two degrees Celsius threshold.

She called again on Tuesday for all countries to offer much more ambitious emission reduction pledges in time for an updated Kyoto Protocol.

"For Durban to be a success, the unanswered political questions need to be addressed. Most importantly the level of ambition and the legal nature of mitigation (emission reduction) commitments after 2012," she said.

The talks in Bangkok, preceded by two days of informal negotiations, will be followed by similar lower-level meetings in Germany in an effort to lay the foundations for ministers and heads of state to reach agreement in Durban.

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