Crunch time prompts final push amid doubts on meetings' last day

COPENHAGEN: Two high-level contact groups are starting to crack the "nuts" in the draft texts for the final outcome of the United Nations climate change conference (COP15) here after the nations of G77 and China received reassurance they would proceed on the draft texts that they'd been working on for the past 11 days.

The hard "nuts" include setting further targets for developed countries to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and working out long-term financial mechanism to help the most vulnerable countries to adapt and mitigate climate change. Other contentious issues include technology transfer and ways to measure, report and verify the efforts of CO2 reductions especially in developing countries.

No texts other than the two that were reported by the chairs of the working groups on the Long-Term Cooperative Action and the amendment to Kyoto Protocol have been negotiating will be used for moving things forward, Danish Prime Minister and COP15 president Lars Lokke Rasmussen announced at about noontime during this morning's first plenary session, which was delayed for about an hour but lasted no more than 10 minutes. A short second session followed.