The United Nations will review its Nobel prize-winning climate panel, whose credibility has been tarnished by errors in a key report on global warming, a spokesman said yesterday.

Calls have been mounting for a major overhaul at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose chairman Rajendra Pachauri has also come under fire for his stewardship of the body and alleged conflict of interest.

UN Environment Programme spokesman said at an international environmental meeting on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that an independent body would be set up to "review and strengthen" the IPCC.

He said the review body would be appointed by independent scientists.

The IPCC's reputation was damaged by a warning in a major 2007 report that global warming could melt Himalayan glaciers by 2035, a claim that has been widely discredited and fuelled scepticism in some quarters about mankind's role in global warming.

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