E-mail protests flood the White House

More than 100,000 e-mail protests have been sent to US President George W Bush since he abandoned the Kyoto agreement.

Friends of the Earth say the campaign has been so successful that the White House server has reportedly crashed five times in the past week.

At peak times, an "e-protest" arrives every second protesting at the abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol curbing climate change.

The Friends of the Earth server is also close to meltdown because it receives copies of all the messages.

Negotiators meet in New York next week to discuss a proposal on how to move forward, tabled by Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, chairman of the UN climate talks.

The last round of talks collapsed in the Hague last November when the US and the EU failed to agree mechanisms for curbing climate change.

The next session had been scheduled for May, but President Bush says he wants more time to study the details.

He then announced he was abandoning the Protocol, but talks are re-scheduled for Bonn in July.

Roger Higman, senior climate change negotiator at Friends of the Earth, said: "The tens of thousands of e-protests jamming the White House server are a wake-up call to politicians to act now, not after."