In Brief: Crucial climate negotiations to be held in Thailand

Follow @{0}BANGKOK, 25 September 2009 (IRIN) - Some 2,500 participants will gather in the Thai capital next week for a crucial round of talks to seek a new deal to combat global warming.
 
The Bangkok Climate Change Talks, from 28 September to 9 October, are the penultimate round of negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty (UNFCCC), and aim to advance a negotiating text for the deal. The talks come ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen  in December, when 192 nations will try to sign off on the deal before the 2012 expiry of the Kyoto Protocol.
 
Negotiations have lagged, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week urged nations to overcome their differences on the burden of emissions cuts and other issues to agree a new deal. “Let us make this a year that we, united nations, rise to the greatest challenge we face as a human family: the threat of catastrophic climate change,” Ban told a meeting of the UN General Assembly on 23 September.
 
“Our road to Copenhagen requires us to bridge our differences. I firmly believe we can,” he said, a day after convening a one-day summit of world leaders to discuss the issue.

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