De Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said he had taken stock among a number of countries after the Copenhagen meeting.

The mood among them was to forge an agreement this December on how to tackle climate change and then discuss further how to "package that outcome" as a treaty, he said in a webcast press conference from Bonn.

Last month's marathon talks yielded the "Copenhagen Accord," a non-binding document crafted by a small group of countries that account for around 80 percent of world carbon emissions.

The accord was written by a couple of dozen leaders on the final day of the talks as the two-week meeting, hamstrung by textual wrangles and finger-pointing, faced collapse.

It disappointed many people who had expected Copenhagen to crown an arduous two-year process with a treaty to roll back the threat posed by greenhouse gases and provide funds for poor, vulnerable countries.

Mauled by the experience, the UN forum is due to resume in the coming months, culminating this year with a ministerial-level meeting in Mexico in December.

"My sense, having spoken to about 15 or 20 countries so far, is that generally people want to reach a conclusion on the (twin negotiating texts) in Mexico and then they will be in a position to decide on how they want to package that outcome in legal terms," De Boer said.

He also made clear that the Copenhagen Accord was not a substitute for the UNFCCC's negotiation template.

"It's a political tool that has broad support at the highest possible level and that we can very usefully deploy to resolve the remaining issues that we have in the negotiating process," he said.

The Copenhagen Accord set a broad goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but did not specify the staging points for achieving this goal or a year by which greenhouse-gas emissions should peak.

Instead, countries are being urged to identify what actions they intend to take, either as binding curbs on emissions or voluntary action. Twenty-eight billion dollars in aid have been pledged by rich countries for 2010-2012.

De Boer said he had asked countries to spell out by January 31 whether they intended to be "associated" with the Copenhagen Accord or what sort of measures they envisaged.

This was not a coercive deadline, but simply to help him write a report on the outcome of Copenhagen, he said.

"You can describe it as a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it," he said.

"If you fail to meet it, then you can still associate with the accord afterwards. In that sense, countries are not being asked to sign the accord, they are not being asked to take on a legally-binding target, they will not be bound to the action which they submit to the (UNFCCC) secretariat.

"It will be an indication of their intent and... (an) important tool to advance the negotiations."

earlier related report
U.N. optimistic that COP16 gets it done
Bonn, Germany (UPI) Jan 20, 2009 - The top U.N. climate official admitted the Copenhagen summit did not deliver enough but still gave countries "all the ingredients" for an ambitious deal to be brokered at the next conference in Mexico in December.

"I don't think Copenhagen delivered enough," Yvo de Boer said in his first news conference since a U.N. climate conference that many called an utter failure.

Rich nations refused to commit to legally binding emissions reductions, and developing countries did not want to have their efforts monitored.

"The window of opportunity to come to grips with this issue is now closing faster than before," de Boer said.

However, the official, who probably knows more about the negotiations than any other person on the planet, vowed that Copenhagen was not a complete failure.

He said Copenhagen achieved three things:

-- It raised climate change to the highest level of government as around 120 world leaders attended;

-- It produced a non-binding political accord that "reflects a political consensus on the long-term global response to climate change that is needed";

-- Negotiations farther away from the cameras brought "an almost full set of decisions to implement rapid climate change action near to completion."

"So in a way Copenhagen did not produce the final cake, but it left countries with all the right ingredients to bake a new one in Mexico," he said. "If countries follow Copenhagen's outcomes clearly with their eyes firmly fixed on the advantages of global action then we can finish the job."

Experts have blasted the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding text that was merely noted but not adopted by the 192 conference parties.

The text sets the limit of global warming to 3.6 F and provides short and long-term finance to help poor nations cope with climate change; it also set 2015 as a review year to see if global action needs to be more urgent to meet the challenge. But it remains a voluntary text, and even if nations commit to it, they are not legally bound to honor their pledges.

The text can nevertheless be used as "a political tool that … we can very usefully deploy to resolve the remaining issues in the negotiating process."

That's why de Boer has asked all countries to sign on to the accord and submit emissions-reduction targets and action plans by the end of this month -- a "soft deadline," he said, so nations can still associate with the accord at a later date.

The short-term challenge is to revive the negotiations.

De Boer said he would travel to Mexico next month to discuss with President Felipe Calderon how to move negotiations forward in the course of this year. He has already contacted around 20 countries about their ideas to improve the process and will talk with many more leaders in the months to come.

"Many feel we need an intensified negotiating schedule in the course of 2010 in order to get the job done," De Boer said.

That means there could be another round of negotiations scheduled ahead or after the one in Bonn in late May.

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