Such plans to ease climate change are among steps outlined in three declarations to be issued at next week's summit in Singapore of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations and six economic powerhouses led by China, Japan, India and Australia.

The 16 countries, which belong to a bloc called the East Asia Summit, harbor conflicting views and differ in capability to deal with the problem. The draft declarations, copies of which were obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, represent efforts to bridge those gaps.

The countries would call on the international community "to urgently act to address the growth of global green gas emissions" and support the use of "civilian nuclear power in a manner ensuring nuclear safety, security and nonproliferation," according to the East Asia Summit declaration.

Such use should conform with safeguards imposed by the U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, it said.

In a separate declaration, ASEAN would pledge to establish "a regional nuclear safety regime" to ensure nuclear energy programs could not be tapped by rogue groups to produce weapons.

Nuclear weapons are banned in Southeast Asia; ASEAN has a treaty that bans the production and storage of nuclear weapons in the region.

East Asian countries would also adopt an "aspirational goal" of expanding their combined forest cover by at least 15 million hectares (37 million acres) by 2020 and fight deforestation.

Developing countries would be given financial assistant to help them fight global warming. Joint studies would also be launched to assess East Asia's vulnerability to climate change.

The East Asia Summit declaration reaffirms support to the United Nations as the prime forum for a global agreement on climate change. But it acknowledged that not all countries in the bloc support the U.N.-backed Kyoto Protocol, which set targets for industrialized nations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases but largely exempted developing ones.

Australia, along with the United States, have refused to sign Kyoto, calling it unfair. They have tried to find an alternative that would include China and India, who like the U.S. are among the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.

China, Indonesia and other developing countries back Kyoto because it primarily holds richer countries responsible for cutting emission and providing money and technology to help poorer nations clean up.

The East Asian declaration would call on member countries to actively take part in forging a new climate change blueprint to replace Kyoto, which expires in 2012. Indonesia will host a conference on a successor to Kyoto next month.

It would call on member countries to work to reduce by at least 25 percent their energy intensity -- the amount of energy needed to produce a dollar of gross domestic product -- by 2030.

That target is similar to one adopted by the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Sydney last September.