U.N. climate talks fell into crisis on Saturday after some developing nations angrily rejected a plan worked out by U.S. President Barack Obama and leaders of other major economies for fighting global warming.

Copenhagen, meant to be the climax of two years of negotiations, risked ending with no firm U.N. accords despite a summit of 120 world leaders on Friday who tried to work out the first climate blueprint since the U.N.'s 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

Countries including Venezuela, Sudan and Tuvalu said they opposed a deal spearheaded on Friday in Copenhagen by the United States, China, India, South Africa and Brazil at the summit. The deal would need unanimous backing to be adopted.

Too weak

Opponents said the document was too weak. It sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degree Celsius rise over pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of $100 billion (62 billion pounds) in annual aid from 2020 for developing nations.

 An acrimonious session long past midnight hit a low point when a Sudanese delegate said the plan in Africa would be like the Holocaust by causing more deadly floods, droughts, mudslides, sandstorms and rising seas.

The document "is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces," said Sudan's Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping. He said the draft text asked "Africa to sign a suicide pact".

Saying it was "devoid of any sense of responsibility and morality", he added: "The promise of $100bn will not bribe us to destroy the continent."

Amicable document
However, the African Union appears to back the deal, along with most of the small island developing states.

"In my mind, this document is amicable," said President Mohammed Nasheed of the Maldives, who took part in the small group discussions from which the "deal" emerged.

"Of course it is not what we were looking for, and I will be the first person to be unsatisfied; but this document allows us to continue negotiations and to have a procedure leading to a binding legal agreement within 2010. I urge all countries to back this, and do not let these talks collapse."

Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and other nations including European Union states, Japan and a representative of the African Union urged delegates to adopt the plan as a U.N. blueprint for action to combat climate change.

"AOSIS stands by the document, we stand by the process," said Dessima Williams, chair of AOSIS. "It was not perfect, there were and still are things in it that we would not want."

Real danger

"We have a real danger of (U.N. climate) talks going the same way as WTO (trade) talks and other multilateral talks," Nasheed said, urging delegates to back the plan to prevent the process dragging on for years.

For any deal to become a U.N. pact it would need to be adopted unanimously at the 193-nation talks.

If some nations are opposed, the deal would be adopted only as a less binding document or merely by its supporters - a group representing far more than half the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

Many nations said the deal fell far short of U.N. ambitions for Copenhagen, meant as a turning point to push the world economy towards renewable energies such as hydro, solar and wind power and away from fossil fuels.

Obama optimistic

Before leaving, Obama said the deal was a starting point.

"This progress did not come easily and we know this progress alone is not enough," he said after talks with China's Premier Wen Jiabao and leaders of India, South Africa and Brazil.

"We've come a long way but we have much further to go," he said of the deal.

"The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy," said Xie Zhenhua, head of China's climate delegation.

European nations were lukewarm to a deal that cut out some goals mentioned previously in draft texts, such as a target of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Many European nations want Obama to offer deeper U.S. cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. But Obama was unable to, partly because carbon capping legislation is stalled in the U.S. Senate. Washington backed a plan to raise $100 billion in aid for poor nations from 2020.

The deal sets an end-January 2010 deadline for all nations to submit plans for curbs on emissions to the United Nations. A separate text proposes an end-2010 deadline for reporting back on - but dropped a plan to insist on a legally binding treaty.

Source: Reuters/BBC