The 11 nations that make up the Pacific Small Island Developing States wrote members of the UN's most powerful body to argue that the threat they face from a warmer world and rising sea levels is comparable to armed conflict. The 15-nation Security Council oversees threats to international peace and security.

"Climate change can devastate a country just as thoroughly as an invading army," Nauru's UN Ambassador Marlene Moses said as chair of the island nations' group.

Moses said the Security Council must step in because the UN-led negotiations for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gases and assistance for the most vulnerable nations is stalled.

"If (the) international community fails to take immediate action, then it will be complicit in the extinction of entire nations," she said.

The group said climate change is contributing to severe food and water shortages in the Pacific and already making refugees of people in Vanuatu, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu and the Solomon Islands.

The group's letter, sent by UN ambassadors from the 11 Pacific island nations, was pointedly critical of the UN

Framework Convention on Climate Change that sponsored the last major climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark last December.

A last-minute political agreement fell short on specific steps to cool the planet, but urged deeper cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for warming the globe. It also set up the first significant program of climate aid to poorer nations and adopted a goal of holding the rise in global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius.

A promised $30 billion fund over the next three years, scaling up to $100 billion a year by 2020, was a key element.

"While the UNFCCC should be the primary forum for developing a global response to climate change, the negotiations are not keeping pace with the severity of the impacts," said Samoa's UN Ambassador Aliioaiga Feturi Elisaia.

"Climate refugees, conflict over increasingly scarce resources and the loss of territory are all impacts caused by climate change that will threaten global peace and security," he said.

In fact, a UN draft document showed emissions cuts pledged at the UN climate talks would put the world on "an unsustainable pathway" toward average global warming 50 percent higher than what industrial countries want — particularly imperiling low-lying and island nations.

The document forecast the average global temperature would rise in coming decades by 3 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, above the 2 degrees Celcius that many nations say should be the absolute limit.

The last-minute voluntary deal emerged principally from US President Barack Obama's meeting with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and the leaders of India, Brazil and South Africa. Since then, negotiations have made little headway trying to lay the groundwork for the next major UN

climate conference in Cancun, Mexico, in December.

There would be some precedent for the Security Council to consider the island nations' request.

In April 2007, during the first Security Council debate on climate change, Britain's then-foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, argued that global conflicts are ignited over the issue.

But the two major groups representing developing countries — the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 — said the topic didn't belong on the council's agenda and accused the Security Council of "ever-increasing encroachment" on the role and responsibility of other UN organs.

Russia also said it should be handled elsewhere, while the United States sidestepped the issue. There was no final council statement or resolution.