Climate deal on the rocks as rifts widen

With only a few day left for the climate summit to end, reaching a comprehensive global agreement on climate change that addresses the concerns of all participating nations seems to be an increasingly remote possibility even as prime ministers and presidents of the world head for Copenhagen.

With negotiations deadlocked over several contentious issues, Danish minister Connie Hedegaard has warned that failure was possible because a lot of time had been spent on repeating positions and arguing about formalities. Hedegaard was speaking at the ceremonial of the high level segment of the talks.

Yvo de Boer, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) executive secretary said that though some progress had been made it was not enough to show to the world. He added that leaders were not coming to Copenhagen to leave empty-handed.

UN secretary general Ban ki Moon warned that the time for consensus had arrived. ''We do not have another year to deliberate. Nature does not negotiate with us,'' he said.

Going by the latest draft texts that have even wider gaps than before, consensus among the 192 nations seems to be getting even more elusive.

An indication of the deepening divide among the nations is the removal of most of the numbers that gave the climate agreement some teeth. Rich nations' now have no definite commitments on emissions cuts or long term global goals nor a deadline for peaking of emissions.