A listing to the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, she said, could aid an Inuit campaign to spur Washington to take stronger steps against global warming after President George W. Bush pulled out in 2001 of the convention's main plan of action, the 127-nation Kyoto protocol.

"We're trying to get the Arctic listed in the convention as a vulnerable area," said Watt-Cloutier, during a scientific conference on climate change in Reykjavik.

The convention already lists small island states, arid zones and mountain areas as especially at risk from warming blamed mainly on a build-up of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from human use of coal, oil or natural gas.

The ICC, representing about 155,000 people in Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Russia, says lifestyles that include hunting seal, walrus and polar bear were threatened. It says Washington, the world's top polluter, was mainly responsible.

DIRTY DOZEN

She said indigenous people successfully lobbied for a reference to the Arctic to be added to another U.N. treaty banning the use of a "dirty dozen" chemicals after traces of the poisons turned up in Inuit breast milk or polar bear fat.

An eight-nation study issued on Monday said the Arctic Ocean could be almost ice-free by the summer of 2100.

Bob Corell, the chair of the study, said Inuit lobbying on the "dirty dozen", which includes DDT, had spurred global action.

"It was a fundamental change that caused the ... treaty to move more rapidly," he said. "It gave credence to the idea that 'this is not a problem we can walk away from' because there are some people who are being affected."

Kyoto is meant as a first step to rein in greenhouse gas emissions but Bush said it would cost too much and wrongly excluded developing nations.

Watt-Cloutier said the Inuit were also preparing a petition to add climate change in the Arctic as a human rights abuse.

The Inuit hope the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a part of the Organization of American States, will equate disruptions to Inuit lifestyles as human rights' abuses.