Copenhagen:
Will world leaders be able to come up with a legally binding agreement at Copenhagen? Environment ministers met for informal talks to advance negotiations on a new pact on Sunday during which Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has signalled that India will not abandon the core tenets of its climate policy but is ready to discuss a draft text.
In fact the text of a political statement will be ready before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other leaders reach Copenhaghen for the final phase of the summit.
India on Sunday rejected points in the draft treaty that wants all countries to cut emissions, agree to a year after which emissions would start reducing and subject their mitigation actions to international scrutiny.
With the official draft treaty circulated on Friday creating clear divisions amongst 194 countries, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said that he would use the draft as a "starting point for further negotiations.
However, he made it clear that India would not compromise on its three key principles - no legally binding emission cuts, no peaking year and no international review of domestic-funded mitigation actions.
"India will not compromise on its 'teen-murti'," he said adding that the outcome of the talks must be within the UN Framework on Climate Change, stick to the Kyoto Protocol and abide by the Bali Action Plan.
"We must get an agreement in 2010," Ramesh said, adding that the text of the political statement should be ready by December 15.
He hinted at a political statement at the end of the 12-day talks which will be attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
"I have clearly and categorically stated on behalf of the government of India that our Prime Minister is not coming here to negotiate the text," Ramesh said.
Article 3 of the draft treaty calls on all parties to reduce the emission cuts by 50, 85 or 90 per cent by 2050, while the subsequent part wants all parties to "peak" their carbon emissions "as soon as possible".
Article 8 calls for a comprehensive review of the implementation of mitigation obligations with the first round beginning in 2016.
"I have made it absolutely clear that Articles 3, 4, 8 are red lines as far as India is concerned. We have problems not only with the drafting but also with the idea," Ramesh said.
Noting that while India had a problem certain provisions of these drafts it was willing to use them as a basic text to build on.
"These are the only two documents that have legitimacy that have been prepared by the two chairs," the minister said.
"There are many things in these drafts we have problems with," he said adding that "the great advantages of these drafts are that they have been driven by all governments, it has been done in a transparent manner and it follows a two track approach.
The 15th meeting of the Conference of Parties had entrusted the responsibility of reaching a deal to two groups -- one to suggest long term cooperative action under the UNFCCC and the other to indicate further commitments by developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol.
The two groups had submitted the draft texts on Friday.
Informal talks among the environment ministers on the draft deal, criticised by rich nations and emerging economies, continued over the weekend with the hope that they could agree on a text that could be put before the heads of state and government assembling for the plenary here later next week.
The highlight of the past week was an attempt by tiny Pacific Island nation Tuvalu to stall the negotiations by staging a walkout as the chair of the conference refused to take up its proposal for limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial years.
However, Danish Minister Connie Hedegaard, chairing the talks, insisted that procedural advances in the first six days had been "fantastic."
"The core discussions... have really started," she said adding the delegates "still have a daunting task in front of us over the next few days."
Sticking to its one protocol approach, developing countries like India, China and Brazil are opposing attempts led Tuvalu and Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to add another protocol to the Kyoto Protocol.
India and other developing nations suspect that Europe's support for a new protocol is also an attempt to weaken the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol sets binding targets for 37 developed countries countries for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
However, EU, like Tuvalu and AOSIS have said here that this Copenhagen summit needs to produce a document much stronger than the Kyoto Protocol that neither puts obligations on US nor on emerging economies.
R K Pachauri, Head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned that failure to come out with a pact to combat global warming will be a "major setback" to the world.
"If we are able to get a good agreement it would create an enormous amount of confidence in the ability of human society to be able to act on a multilateral basis.
"If we fail I don't think everything is lost but it certainly would be a major setback," he said.
Sweden's environment minister, Andreas Carlgren said: "If we were to end up with an agreement where the only legally binding part would be the Kyoto Protocol then we would not manage to achieve what is needed."
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that he was "cautiously optimistic" on the outcome of UN climate talks even as he termed the first week of talks as a "good start".
"I'm still optimistic, but cautious. I'm cautiously optimistic," he told reporters at the airport of the Danish capital. Another report said that the riot police had arrested dozens of protesters today as around 200 people tried to block a section of Copenhagen's port.