AUTO COMMIT

The postgres manual states:

"In the default mode, statements are committed only when EXEC SQL COMMIT is
issued. The embedded SQL interface also supports autocommit of transactions
(similar to libpq behavior) via the -t command-line option to ecpg (see
below) or via the EXEC SQL SET AUTOCOMMIT TO ON statement. In autocommit
mode, each command is automatically committed unless it is inside an
explicit transaction block. This mode can be explicitly turned off using EXEC
SQL SET AUTOCOMMIT TO OFF."

I've used the -t command-line option when compiling my code, and AUTOCOMMIT
is set, but I still get the following error message when declaring a cursor:

DECLARE CURSOR can only be used in transaction blocks.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks

Atif