The three-hour session ended about 2:30 a.m., leaving top advisors to work out the final language of the draft agreement on how to tame global warming and help poor countries cope with its impacts.

Advisors resumed work almost immediately to craft a document that could be presented to heads of state and government at 8:00 a.m.

"We tried to find an umbrella political accord, if you like," said Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who also holds the rotating presidency of the European Union.

"We tried to advance the main points and have asked the 'sherpas' to work on the text through the night so we can discuss them tomorrow morning," he told reporters, speaking in Swedish.

"We've had a very constructive dialogue," said Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen. "We're not there yet at all. But in order to achieve as much as possible, I decided ... to invite representatives of the regional groups to a meeting where we discussed how we could make progress," he told reporters.

The declaration will likely call for preventing global temperatures from going up more than 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, according to a participant in the meeting.

Small island nations, their very existence threatened by rising seas, have called for a cap of 1.5 degrees.

It will also tally up the pledges from rich nations on cutting greenhouse gases by 2020, and propose a target for all countries by mid-century.

On financing for the poor countries most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, it crystallised a consensus that has formed in the previous two days of the troubled UN talks.

It would kick off with 10 billion dollars (7 billion euros) a year from 2010 to 2012, climbing to 50 billion dollars annually by 2015 and 100 billion by 2020.

The text also proposes a range of innovative mechanisms for raising the money, ranging from a tax on air and sea transports fuels to a tax on financial transfers.

On another critical issue, the draft calls for transforming the political accord and relevant UN texts into a binding treaty within six months.

If the declaration is accepted at the summit, negotiators will then transpose its objectives into the texts that have laboriously emerged over two years of negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Poor nations have complained bitterly over the course of the 12-day talks in Copenhagen, steered by the host country Denmark, about being locked out of key meetings, an objection that could resurface Friday.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Brazilian President Inacio Lula da Silva all took part in the talks.

Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi, Mexico's Felipe Calderon, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the European Commission's Jose Manuel Barroso were also present.

Among industrialised countries, the other participants were Norway, Russia, Spain, Australia, Poland and Japan.

Representing small island states were the Maldives and Grenada, with Sudan, Algeria, Ethiopia, Lesotho and Gabon from Africa. Sudan is also the leader of the G77 group of 130 developed countries, Algeria heads the Africa Group, and Lesotho leads the bloc of Least Developed Countries.

Other major emerging economies present included China, India and South Africa.

Besides Brazil, other countries in which deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions include Colombia and Indonesia.

Rounding out the negotiating group are South Korea, which is not classified as an industrial country within the Kyoto Protocol; and Saudi Arabia, leading producer within OPEC; and Bangladesh.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News