theguardian :
Negotiators in Paris are to present their final draft text on Saturday morning for a deal on limiting climate change after working through Friday night to thrash out remaining details.
The French president, François Hollande, is due to join Ban Ki-moon at the landmark summit at 11.30am local time, when the text is expected to be published. The draft is predicted to be officially adopted in the afternoon.
Sources said the final text was only settled on at 6.45am after negotiators and ministers worked through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights at Le Bourget in north-east Paris. Laurent Fabius – the French foreign minister who has marshalled the
text through its final stages as president of the talks – said on Thursday night: “All the conditions are ripe for a universal and ambitious agreement.
“We will never find a momentum as favourable as in Paris, but now the responsibility lies with ministers, who tomorrow [Saturday] will make their choice. I will present them a text that will be the most ambitious and balanced as possible.”
Earlier, Barack Obama had phoned the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in a last-ditch effort to thrash out a climate change agreement to curb carbon emissions beyond 2020, when current commitments run out.
As the negotiations ran into overtime – something that has happened at virtually every such meeting of the last 20 years – Fabius on Friday called for a cooling-off period to allow more high level lobbying behind closed doors. He put off planned public plenary sessions, which risk being volatile, and gave the floor over to closed meetings in a last push for an agreement. Peaceful protests are planned by climate activists across Paris. Civil society groups will hand out thousands of red tulips to represent red lines they say should not be crossed, and hold a rally under the Eiffel Tower if and when a deal is reached.
Even with Obama’s efforts to call in political favours with the Chinese president, sharp divisions remained on Friday between the US, India and China. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said the talks were the most complicated and difficult negotiations he had ever been involved in.
Negotiators in Paris are to present their final draft text on Saturday morning for a deal on limiting climate change after working through Friday night to thrash out remaining details.
The French president, François Hollande, is due to join Ban Ki-moon at the landmark summit at 11.30am local time, when the text is expected to be published. The draft is predicted to be officially adopted in the afternoon.
Sources said the final text was only settled on at 6.45am after negotiators and ministers worked through Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights at Le Bourget in north-east Paris. Laurent Fabius – the French foreign minister who has marshalled the
text through its final stages as president of the talks – said on Thursday night: “All the conditions are ripe for a universal and ambitious agreement.
“We will never find a momentum as favourable as in Paris, but now the responsibility lies with ministers, who tomorrow [Saturday] will make their choice. I will present them a text that will be the most ambitious and balanced as possible.”
Earlier, Barack Obama had phoned the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, in a last-ditch effort to thrash out a climate change agreement to curb carbon emissions beyond 2020, when current commitments run out.
As the negotiations ran into overtime – something that has happened at virtually every such meeting of the last 20 years – Fabius on Friday called for a cooling-off period to allow more high level lobbying behind closed doors. He put off planned public plenary sessions, which risk being volatile, and gave the floor over to closed meetings in a last push for an agreement. Peaceful protests are planned by climate activists across Paris. Civil society groups will hand out thousands of red tulips to represent red lines they say should not be crossed, and hold a rally under the Eiffel Tower if and when a deal is reached.
Even with Obama’s efforts to call in political favours with the Chinese president, sharp divisions remained on Friday between the US, India and China. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said the talks were the most complicated and difficult negotiations he had ever been involved in.
