By Raghavendra Verma, International News Services

In an underwater cabinet meeting held on October 17 in the Island nation of Maldives, President Mohammed Nasheed and 12 of his cabinet colleagues signed a document calling on all countries to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.

It was staged to help focus attention on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December where world leaders plan to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

The 25 minute meeting, where whiteboard and hand signals were used to communicate, highlighted the plight of the country that might become uninhabitable within 100 years due to the rising sea levels.

“If it is Maldives today, you cannot save yourself tomorrow,” Nasheed said after emerging from the meeting for which he and his ministers scuba-dived three metres deep to the bottom of the sea off Girifushi island, about 35 nautical miles from capital Malé, itself an island set in the Indian Ocean.

A tourist paradise with coral reefs and white sand beaches, Maldives comprises of 1,192 islands, most of which are less than one metre above sea level and are scattered over an area of 960 km long across the equator in the Indian Ocean.

Contingency plans have already drafted, with the country creating a fund to buy a new homeland for its 350,000 people if they have to abandon their archipelago. Maldives has also committed itself to become the world's first carbon-neutral nation in a decade.