Almost 190 countries from all over the world were last night on the brink of striking a deal on how a comprehensive new agreement aimed at tackling global warming is to be negotiated over the next two years.
An all-night session involving hard bargaining over words and their meaning marked the end of the 13th UN Conference on Climate Change at Nusa Dua, on the Indonesian island of Bali.
Yvo de Boer, the UN's climate chief, predicted that the conference would conclude by "firing the starting shot for a new negotiating process to deliver a new climate change regime in 2009".
Bali would be remembered as unique, because it marked the beginning of serious negotiations that would "shape climate change policy for years to come", he declared.
This process, culminating in Copenhagen in December 2009, would decide what to do with the Kyoto Protocol, which is due to expire three years later, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Discounting deadlock, he said there was "such public pressure built up to deliver a result here that we can't leave without a political answer to the scientific message" that global warming is already an alarming reality. Nobody wanted the Bali summit to fail "or to be the country that caused the failure", he said, adding that two negotiating groups were working to resolve oustanding issues.
The core issue was the nature of the commitments to be negotiated over the next two years, aimed at achieving deep cuts by developed countries in their greenhouse gas emissions. This year's assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said emissions would have to be reduced by between 60 and 80 per cent by 2050 if "dangerous" global warming is to be averted.
The United States - supported by Canada, Japan and Saudi Arabia - worked hard to ensure that a reference in the draft text to emission cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 was deleted from the "Bali mandate".
It is understood that the US also sought "commitments" from major developing countries to cut emissions, and even threatened trade sanctions if they refused, according to a spokesman for the G77 group.
The spokesman, Pakistan ambassador Akram Munir, said the threat was made to pressurise developing countries to undertake commitments that were "unfair and unjust".
One source said there had also been "contacts between capitals" over the last 24 hours, including calls from Washington to London, in relation to the content of the negotiations in Bali and the EU's stance here.
Throughout the talks, the EU insisted on the inclusion of ambitious targets to cut emissions. This was strongly opposed by the US as "pre-judging" the next round.
The Bush administration is also believed to have expressed concern about an EU threat to boycott a climate change meeting in Hawaii next month.
The EU suggested that this meeting would be "meaningless" unless Bali produced a "road map" which had a clear destination, and persisted in calling on the US to show more serious engagement in the UN process.
To underline the importance of agreement here on a meaningful "Bali road map", UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon - who addressed the conference earlier - flew back from a mission to East Timor.