India fears climate talks will collapse

With no signs of breakthrough in the tough negotiations in climate change conference here, India fears that the talks could collapse, but for a miracle.

As negotiators raced against time to hammer out a deal, four developing countries -- India, Brazil, South Africa and China -- today issued a joint statement accusing the rich nations of trying to derail the talks.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, leading the Indian negotiators for working out some sort of a compromise to get developed nations commit to emission cuts and funds transfer to poor countries, said the talks were going "too slow".

He told reporters that enormous work needed to be done before the final deal could be clinched but feared that the talks would breakdown over serious outstanding issues.

India is of the opinion that if a compromise was not arrived at, negotiations to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive beyond 2012 will continue into next year.

Ramesh said India was disappointed that developed nations were being unreasonable.

Meanwhile, the UN conference made public the draft text bracketing all key contentious issues on emissions cuts and peaking year for the same.

Developing nations, led by Africa, had walked out of the talks yesterday accusing the rich nations of not doing enough to arrest global warming and making attempts to undermine the Kyoto Protocol.