The United States is ready to participate jointly with other countries in programs to reduce damage from the global warming in developing countries, the state secretary said Thursday.

The programs are expected to cost $100 billion annually up to 2020.

"We expect this funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private," Hillary Clinton told journalists at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

She also stressed that her country is for a transparent and legally binding international agreement on the action against climate change.

The 15th UN climate change conference, the result of two years of international talks on a binding treaty to cut global carbon emissions, began in the Danish capital on December 7.

The conference, which brings together about 15,000 participants from 192 countries, will run until December 18. It has so far failed to produce a plan to fight global warming.

The Kyoto Protocol, a legally binding agreement restricting carbon emissions, expires in 2012. A new deal is needed to continue efforts beyond 2012.

The United States did not sign the original Kyoto Protocol.

COPENHAGEN, December 17 (RIA Novosti)