The talks under the UN's 192-nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed a work programme for negotiations leading to a treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009 to roll back the threat of global warming.

The meeting, which ended Friday after a two-day forum at ministerial level, had been a technical and sometimes brutally complex affair but yielded pragmatic results, said some.

"This was intended as a blue-collar conference that had to deliver practical results on the road to Copenhagen," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer.

"What this conference very clearly showed is that from now on it's for real in this process. The countries are getting down to serious negotiations and for an agreement."

The outcome "was what we were hoping for, and when I say we I think more than just the US," James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told AFP.

"But it is going to require some very sustained work and also a higher level of political will on everybody's part. [It] lays bare the challenge that lies ahead the challenge of getting to an agreement within a year."

South Africa Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said that some of the issues up for discussion had "led to tension between developed and developing countries."

"But even so I think we will be ready for negotiations and tension and confrontation are part of negotiations. I will be ready and am looking forward to next year," he told AFP.

Su Wei, the Chinese chief climate negotiator, said he was "disappointed by the slow progress -- even no progress" at Poznan, with "some parties not going to move anywhere" on certain issues.

"I think the developed countries are blocking on every item. I don't think that they are objectively prepared to make any progress," Su told AFP.

Green groups were highly disappointed, with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) saying Poznan was a "major missed opportunity" for hammering out concessions on how to slash greenhouse-gas emissions.

"This was a moment in time when real leaders would have stepped up and taken the positions that would combat the economic and climate crisis at the same time," WWF bemoaned.

It said the "only positive decision" was on progress to launch a fund to provide cash to help poor countries cope with climate change -- the so-called Adaptation Fund.

Developing nations battled for this Fund to tap wider sources of revenue from the burgeoning carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol, but this was rejected by wealthy countries -- a confrontation that reflected "bitterness," de Boer admitted.

"Developing countries rightly expect the world's wealthiest nations to take the lead. Instead, industrialized countries are continuing to dodge their financial and technology transfer obligations to developing nations," Friends of the Earth International said.

"The meeting accomplished little more than rehashing the same language discussed in Bali," Greenpeace said. "Saying the same thing you said a year ago is not progress."

"The best way forward at this point is to draw a line under the Poznan meeting, and look forward to what we can -- and must -- accomplish in less than a year," Greenpeace said.

British charity Oxfam said Poznan "exposed a shameful lack of progress."

"An ambitious deal in Copenhagen is still possible, and is needed more than ever, but it will need far more rapid progress than over the past year," it said.

earlier related report
UN talks set programme to a landmark climate pact in '09
A planet-wide forum on climate change Saturday hammered out a work schedule designed to end in a treaty for expunging the darkening threat to mankind from greenhouse gases.

In the pre-dawn hours, the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Poland set down a programme of work that, it declared, would conclude with a historic pact in Copenhagen next December.

Taking effect after 2012, the deal will set down unprecedented measures for curbing emissions of heat-trapping carbon gases and helping poor countries in the firing line of climate change.

"Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action," declared Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki, who chaired the marathon.

UNFCCC members will submit proposals for the treaty's text in the early months of 2009.

By June, these will then be condensed from what is likely to be a massive document into a blueprint for negotiations.

"Last year was the year of exchanging ideas and developing a good atmosphere in the process and asking each other questions," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer at a press conference.

"Now we are moving into a negotiating mode and it's going to be a very heavy agenda. But as in any marathon, you need to do some really fast running at the end, not at the beginning."

The agreement sets the stage for a year-long process revolving around two big issues: who should make the biggest sacrifices on curbing greenhouse gases, and how to beef up support for poor countries exposed to climate change.

The 12-day meeting ended with a two-day ministerial-level gathering that, despite flourishes of rhetoric, failed to make any big advance on these core problems.

It opened the way to launching a so-called Adaptation Fund for helping poor countries that are most exposed to rising sea levels, drought and floods.

But, to the bitter disappointment of Brazil, India and other emerging countries, it yielded no accord on how to boost the fund's income to the scale of billions of dollars per year -- a level that many experts say will be needed, just a few decades from now.

The arduous process was boosted by the adoption at a European Union (EU) summit in Brussels on Friday of a deal to slash EU emissions by 20 percent by 2020.

Delegates in Poznan had held their breath, fearful that backsliding by the EU would fatally sap momentum in the UN track.

The final day of the Poznan talks was powerfully spurred by green guru Al Gore, 2007 co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and by US Senator John Kerry, acting as pointman for president-elect Barack Obama, who has vowed to root out the heart of George W. Bush's policies on climate change.

Gore said momentum was at last building -- in the United States, Europe, China, Brazil and elsewhere -- towards a treaty in Copenhagen that could roll back the threat.

The EU's so-called "20-20-20" deal seeks to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, make 20 percent energy savings and bring renewable energy sources up to 20 percent of total energy use.

It is the most ambitious scheme of any major economy for dealing with climate change and energy use.

It throws down the gauntlet to the United States, Japan and other rich countries to follow suit in next year's negotiations.

Green groups blasted the outcome at Poznan.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) describing it as a "major missed opportunity" to thrash out concessions on slashing greenhouse-gas emissions.

"This was a moment in time when real leaders would have stepped up and taken the positions that would combat the economic and climate crisis at the same time," WWF said.

Scientists point the finger for climate change at human influence, especially the burning of fossil fuels in power stations, factories and by cars, as well as through deforestation and agriculture.

Gigatonnes of greenhouse gases spew each year into the Earth's atmosphere, acting like an invisible blanket that stores solar heat and changes the climate system.

By century's end, sea levels will rise, deserts will grow and storms floods and droughts could become more frequent.

Even though the peril now seems clear, addressing its source carries an economic cost, because it implies a switch away from fossil fuels that remain the backbone of the world's energy supply.

This is why the negotiations in 2009 are likely to be tense.

Rich countries acknowledge their historic role in the problem but say emerging powers like China and India must also slow their surging carbon pollution.

Developing nations argue that the industrialised world should lead by example, and foot the bill for clean-energy technology and coping with the impact of global warming.

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