UN members adopt blueprint for universal climate pact

Government delegates adopted an 86-page draft as the official basis for negotiations on climate change

GENEVA: Almost 200 nations on Friday agreed to a draft text for a deal due in 2015 to fight climate change but put off hard choices about narrowing down a vast range of options for limiting a damaging rise in temperatures.

Government delegates adopted an 86-page draft as the official basis for negotiations, more than double the 38 pages in an earlier document, after a week-long session at which countries freely added text without any checks.

The document has radically varying proposals for slowing climate change - one foresees a phase-out of net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, for instance, another would vaguely seek a peak of emissions "as soon as possible".

"Can we take it that the negotiating text you delivered today in Geneva is the negotiating text on which (we) will start substantive negotiations?" the meeting's co-chairman Daniel Reifsnyder asked delegates.

"Hearing no objections, it is so decided," he said as the gavel came down and negotiators burst into applause at the end of six days of talks.