BALI CONFERENCE: The crafting of language preoccupied negotiators at the final all-night session of the UN conference, writes Frank McDonald.
The ebb and flow of negotiations in Bali left Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), feeling "a bit like a Swiss clock that sort of goes up and down". On Thursday, things were "falling to pieces" and yesterday they were back on track.
The process was unique, even unprecedented - the beginning of serious negotiations that would shape climate change policy for years to come.
"Countries are treating this with great caution," he said last night. "They do not want to be led up a garden path to somewhere they don't want to go."
That's why the language was being "crafted very carefully", de Boer explained - unlike what happened with the Kyoto Protocol, which had taken two years to negotiate "and five years to understand what we had negotiated". This time, everyone also wanted to "do a deal that includes the US".
Nobody wanted to go home empty-handed, including the US delegation in Bali. And after being repeatedly accused by Al Gore among others of playing an obstructionist role here, Bush's representatives could not run run the risk of being branded as the main culprit for wrecking the talks.
The EU threatened to boycott US-sponsored talks on global warming involving the world's 17 major greenhouse gas emitting countries next month unless its delegation here agreed to a meaningful "Bali mandate". If China joined the boycott, it would have been fatal for Bush's initiative.
Washington reacted by making contact with senior government officials in a number of EU capitals - not only to protest against any such move, but also to portray as unrealistic the EU's demand for target cuts of 25 to 40 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to be included in the Bali mandate.
The Bush administration favours a non-binding, bottom-up, voluntary arrangement - a pick-and-choose approach, in effect. It makes little or no distinction between developed and developing countries, arguing that major economies such as China will need to make commitments to cut their emissions.
"Developing countries . . . had to fight every inch of the way to secure reflection of our objectives and interests," said Pakistan's ambassador, Munir Akram, speaking for the G77 group and China. "There were pressures and even threats to undertake commitments which are quintessentially unfair and unjust."
The threats, which it was clear came from the US, included trade sanctions. "It was said in the course of negotiations," Munir said. "What's in the heart or mind sometimes comes to the tongue, and shows an approach that is not the way in which will build a co-operative regime for control of climate change."
Developing countries were prepared to take steps to reduce their emissions and find a way forward that would not "make the same mistakes in polluting the planet as 200 years of carbon-rich development in the industrialised world", he said, adding that they were happy with other aspects of the deal.
The most extraordinary argument revolved around how to refer to the the most recent scientific assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the preamble - not least because of its findings this year suggested the urgent need for deep cuts in emissions, mainly in the developed countries.
The final stage of the negotiations was entrusted to two representative groups of countries - one to deal with how to refer to the IPCC's fourth assessment as well as "enhanced measures" by developed countries to mitigate global warming, and the other to deal with adaptation, finance and technology transfer.
EU representation on these working groups was provided by Portugal, its current president, as well as the European Commission, Denmark, Germany and Slovenia. The EU's two objectives were to ensure future work is guided by the IPCC's science and that developed countries would continue to take the lead.
Ministers were directly involved in the "high-level segment" of the Bali conference since Wednesday morning and found themselves at close quarters with senior US officials, led by under-secretary of state Paula Dobriansky. As usual, the EU position was hammered out at daily co-ordination meetings.
Al Gore's identification of the US as the "principal obstacle" to reaching a deal in Bali seems to have had a similarly salutary effect as former US president Bill Clinton's intervention at the Montreal climate summit two years ago, which launched the latest round of talks to find a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
Though Mr Gore's speech on Thursday night was greeted with rapturous applause, just like Clinton's in Montreal, the US still had its allies in Bali - Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Australia.
Indeed, Canada won the unenviable "Fossil of the Year" title from environmental groups for its negative role.