The Paris climate negotiations are now expected to end on Saturday, one day after the scheduled closing date. The announcement was made by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
"It is progressing but we have a lot of work because it is 5:45 am Friday so today the text is going to be worked on, I am going to continue with consultations. And therefore I will present the text not on Friday evening, as I had thought, but Saturday morning, early in the morning and we will be able to make the necessary decisions by midday. "
On Thursday, co-host of the conference, Fabius admitted that the latest draft of the agreement still left several issues unresolved, including the varying degrees of contributions to be made by wealthy and developing nations as part of the agreement.
Despite the delay, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said even with the disagreements that still existed, he himself was "convinced and confident" that they would reach an "ambitious, strong accord."
"There are still several outstanding issues, like differentiation of ambitions, and climate financings etc, but during many years of negotiations they have identified all the issues, very good solutions have been already presented. This morning we have a much cleaner, (more) streamlined text, and this is a good basis of further negotiations. Many brackets have been dropped and there are few brackets remaining."
He also appealed for negotiators to make their decision based on global vision.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he's hopeful that negotiators can finalize a landmark climate accord on Saturday and has been working behind the scenes to reach compromises on contentious issues.
"There's a lot of progress, progress made last night, a long night. But, still a couple of very difficult issues that we're working on, and over the course of today, we'll have some meetings with various groups to work those through. I'm hopeful. I think there's a way to go forward if there's reasonableness. And over the course of the next hours, this should take shape and its possible that it could come to a conclusion some time tomorrow."
On Friday night, a determined message was delivered by the lighting up of Paris' iconic Eiffel Tower, encouraging negotiators to "decarbonize", keep global warming below "1.5 degrees" and stressing "no plan B".
For CRI, I'm Niu Honglin.
