Winston-Salem, July 11: The RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co, bowing to pressure from tobacco critics, including president Bill Clinton, said that it was retiring its controversial Joe Camel advertising character.

Clinton and the Federal Trade Commission immediately praised the cigarette maker's decision to replace the controversial cartoon-like figure, which critics said was used to induce young people to smoke.

"I welcome RJ Reynolds' decision today to stop using Joe Camel in its advertisements. This step is long overdue," Clinton said in a statement.

"I am glad RJR has finally taken this step today, and I hope other companies will follow suit. As I said last year when we announced the Food and Drug Administration rule to protect youth from tobacco, we must put tobacco ads like Joe Camel out of our children's reach forever," Clinton said.

The president, who was travelling in Europe, pledged "to keep fighting until the days of marketing tobacco to our children are over."

Vice president Al Gore called the decision to pull the ads "a step in the right direction but there is still more to do."

The Federal Trade Commission, while praising the tobacco company's move, said it had asked RJ Reynolds to sign an enforceable order preventing resumption of the ad campaign at any time in the future.

The FTC said it asked the company "to sign an enforceable order preventing resumption of the campaign, to agree to consumer education messages discouraging persons under the age of 18 from smoking and to maintain and report to the commission data on their share of the underage market."

RJ Reynolds said in a statement that Joe Camel would not appear in a new advertising campaign that will kick off next week on billboards nationally and in magazines next month.

The company said the new ads will feature the traditional trade marked camel that appears on every pack of the company's Camel brand of cigarettes. Joe Camel had been the primary marketing symbol for Camel since 1988.

RJ Reynolds also said it will phase out Joe Camel advertising at places where cigarettes are sold.

The move to pull Joe Camel comes just weeks after RJ Reynolds and other tobacco companies agreed to a $368.5 billion settlement with a coalition of states that are suing cigarette companies to recover the costs of treating smoking-related health problems.

Not only Joe Camel but all cartoon-like characters promoting smoking would be banned under that agreement.

In nine years as a marketing figure, Joe Camel has been the focus of tobacco critics' ire. They complained that the slick, colourful posters featuring the cartoon-like character appealed to children, encouraging them to take up smoking.

In a news release announcing the change, the company made no mention of the settlement or of other pressure to dump Joe Camel.

"We are taking this new campaign nationally because of the very positive response we have heard from adult smokers who have seen some of the new ads that we have run in selected magazines since March," Fran Creighton, RJR's vice-president of marketing for Camel, said in the news release.

The new ads - featuring the slogan "What You're Looking For" - were developed in early 1996, and RJR has been testing the advertising campaign for the past several months, it said. RJ Reynolds Tobacco is a unit of RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.