A BRITISH industrial group today called on negotiators grappling with global warming to agree on a worldwide switch from coal and oil to greater use of nuclear and other renewable energy sources.

The British Nuclear Energy Forum made its appeal to Enviroment Secretary John Gummer, who is to head the British delegation at a UN conference on climate change ending this week.

``Nuclear power and the renewables are the only energy sources which do not produce carbon dioxide,'' the forum said in a letter to Mr Gummer.

Carbon emissions are widely blamed for rising world temperatures.

``If we are serious about combating global warming, we must retain and develop the nuclear option and encourage renewable energy sources as a matter of urgency,'' said the letter from the forum's director-general, Roger Hayes.

The appeal was the latest move by industrial and other lobby groups in and around the two-week conference, which is aimed at agreeing tighter targets for cutting carbon emissions under the 1992 UN Climate Change Convention.

A consortium of US oil companies and corporations whose industries use cheap fossil fuels is campaigning fiercely against any emission targets.

The Global Climate Coalition, backed by a similar group from Australia and oil-producers Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, argues that not enough is yet known about what causes warming - and questions whether it is even taking place.

Opposing them are many governments, the United Nations' own Environmental Programme, the World Health Organisation, a coalition of global insurance companies, new technology industries, and small island states.

The WHO issued a report last week forecasting that global warming, if it continued at its present pace, would bring tropical diseases into temperate countries and cause a worldwide health crisis.

Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose report is the focus of the conference, says temperature increases could melt ice caps and cause sea-levels to rise, flooding coastal areas and submerging small islands.

The insurers, who face mounting bills for damage from storms and other natural disasters, say whatever the truth of the origin of global warming, action must be taken as ``a reasonable precaution'' to cut the use of oil and gas.

Environmental groups, which mostly oppose the use of nuclear power saying it is as dangerous as fossil fuels, say governments at the conference are dragging their feet and putting off any decisions.

Britain, supported by several other countries, says emissions should be reduced by 5% to 10% of their 1990 level by 2010.-Reuter.