Thousands of bleary-eyed negotiators trooped back to their hotels for a few hours of rest before they would be called back and told to finish negotiations within six months.
The atmosphere was vitiated further when some of the NGOs shadowing the talks leaked a UN assessment, which said that with the current level of emissions reduction commitments by rich countries, global temperature could rise over three degrees celsius in the coming decades.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said any rise above two degrees may have "unpredictable and catastrophic consequences".
An official of the UNFCCC secretariat expected heads of state would now ask their officials to finish negotiations by June 2010, when the officials are scheduled to meet at UNFCCC headquarters in Bonn. "If they fail again, they will be given another six months, till the summit in Mexico City next November," he added.
A failure to finalise a treaty will mean that after 2012, when the current phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out, there will be no legal instrument to tackle climate change that is already affecting farm output, making droughts, floods and storms more frequent and more severe, and raising the sea level.
---Agencies
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