MEXICO CITY - Mexico Monday expressed its support for the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, calling for a binding treaty to be reached at the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa.

Mexico's Environment Ministry said in a statement that without a binding treaty, it will be impossible to move forward on the mitigation of climate change's effects.

"This is the cornerstone that makes negotiations complex, and it is necessary to reach basic agreements," Mexico's Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada said.

The minister said that Mexico will focus on the agreements reached at the conference in Durban and continue to fulfil its voluntary commitments.

He also said that Mexico will reduce 50.66 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2012.

The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which opened on November 28, to review and discuss global climate change challenges and look for global commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol, reached in 1997, requires 37 industrialized countries to slash carbon emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But as the pact's first commitment period is set to expire by the end of next year, the COP17 is trying to ensure the protocol's continuation and urge the parties to sign up for a second commitment period.