Climate talks closer to agreement on limiting global temperature: official

A new stage in the development of a final agreement on climate change for limiting global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius or less was reached yesterday, according to the UN assistant secretary-general on Climate Change.

Janos Pasztor, said in an interview with the UN News Service, on the sidelines of the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) that all delegations had received the documents, they were reading them and would be discussing the paper in their groups, and then there would feedback provided to a new plenary organised this evening.

They would presumably be working on it all night, because there were still many brackets, and they need to be removed so we can find solutions to those issues, he added.

Laurent Fabius, COP21 president and French minister of foreign affairs, said during a meeting of the Paris Committee that he was convinced the conference would be able to find an agreement but to achieve this nations needed to join forces, and unite their efforts. He added nations needed to be guided by this need to achieve compromises.

"The text that you will be receiving in a moment strives to reflect as faithfully as possible the compromises that are emerging," Fabius explained. "The rule we have followed in all of this has been not to prejudge the resolution of the most political points contained therein, and to maintain a balance between the various options that remain open in the text."

He called on delegates to continue discussions that would enable reaching a "legally binding agreement" which was also ambitious, balanced, durable and sustainable. He warned, however, this was not the final version of the document.

"In fact, it might still contain certain elements that are not quite precise yet or that are erroneously interpreted. Apologies in advance and we'll seek to remedy that," he said.