A US-European standoff headed toward a compromise solution late on Friday at the UN climate conference, breaking a deadlock over how ambitious the goal should be in negotiating future cutbacks in global-warming gases, the UN climate chief said.
The exemption of fast-growing economies such as China's and India's from the Kyoto pact was a major US complaint.
Asked whether a deal was assured, Yvo de Boer replied, "Absolutely. The only question is how long is it going to take to get, how long we will have to stay up to wait for it."
Said Germany's environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, "The climate in the climate conference is good."
Bali's outcome, and the results of two years of negotiations to follow, may help determine how high the planet's temperatures will rise for decades to come.
Delegates for days had sparred over the wording of the conference's main decision document, whose most contentious passage was the European Union's suggestion of a goal of reducing emissions by between 25 and 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Trying to break the deadlock, the conference president, Indonesia's Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, proposed revised language dropping those mid-range numbers, but still reaffirming that emissions should be reduced at least by half by 2050.
The UN's de Boer told reporters the mid-range 25 to 40 percent was implicit "an inevitable stop on that road" in the 50-percent goal for midcentury.
Witoelar's proposal provided a basis for the long-expected compromise, producing a relatively vague mandate for two years of negotiations.
As worded, his draft "Bali Roadmap" did not guarantee any level of binding commitment by any nation. - DDNEWS
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