Bali U.N. climate talks set to seek 2009 deal

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After talks lasting beyond a planned Friday deadline, disputes lingered about how far a final "road map" for a climate pact to succeed the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol should demand action by China, India and other developing nations.

"We support this," Humberto Rosa, Portugal's Secretary of State for Environment, told a session of weary delegates called to debate a compromise among almost 190 nations after two weeks of negotiations in Bali, Indonesia.

But the meeting broke off after objections from China, saying that many delegation leaders were still in side talks outside the plenary. If approved, a draft decision would launch two years of talks on a sweeping new long-term treaty to involve all nations.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Bali on Saturday morning for an unscheduled return to the talks from East Timor. He was due to hold a news conference later in the morning.

The talks had been bogged down by a row between the United States, which opposes a guideline that rich countries should cut emissions by 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and the European Union, which favoured the target.

A draft compromise, reached after days of acrimony at a beach resort on the Indonesian island, relegated the range to a footnote from a more prominent position in the preamble.

"Deep cuts in global emissions will be required" to avoid dangerous climate change, the preamble says.

The United States, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases and the only industrialised nation not party to Kyoto, said it was satisfied with the compromise. "We can live with the preamble," U.S. negotiator Harlan Watson told Reuters.

BAN HOPEFUL

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