COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) – Environment ministers from 44 key countries on yesterday wrapped up closed-door talks aimed at laying the groundwork for a political agreement at next month’s UN conference on global warming.

Danish Climate Minister Connie Hedegaard described the meeting as “very constructive”.

Delegations included major greenhouse gas emitters, including China, the United States, India and Brazil, as well as several island nations and African states that are among the poorest in the world and most vulnerable to climate change.

The two-day talks were held ahead of the December 7-18 summit which aims to reach a post-2012 deal for slashing greenhouse gas emissions and easing the impact of likely droughts, floods, storms and rising seas unleashed by disrupted weather systems.

But the 192 members of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change remain deadlocked after two years of negotiations.

“This was not a decision-making forum, but the ministers realise that we have come very close to the deadline. We have to come to an agreement that will not be partial, but total,” Hedegaard said.

“The (discussion) process doesn’t continue forever,” she added.

UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, also present at the talks, said the United States would play a key role in clinching a successful agreement in Copenhagen in December, but stressed that it was not all up to Washington.

“The United States is an important key to success, but it is not the only key,” he said.

“We need more ambition from industrialised countries in order to achieve the scientific recommendation” to slash greenhouse gas emissions, he told reporters.

French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo meanwhile slammed the lack of US progress on emission reductions.

“We have a clear problem with our American friends,” he told AFP on the sidelines of the meeting.

“The world’s greatest power, which pollutes the most per capita, has to commit more” to reducing its emissions, he added.

Developing nations have called for wealthy economies to cut their emissions by at least 40 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels and to provide around one per cent of their gross domestic product

per year, or around $400 billion in finance.

So far, no rich country has come anywhere close to meeting such a demand.

They, in turn, are pressing emerging giants such as China, India and Brazil to strengthen promises to tackle their own greenhouse gas output.

Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen, speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, lauded Chinese and US support for his country’s push to reach a politically binding agreement at the UN conference.

“I am glad that the Danish strategy was supported today in Beijing at the Chinese-American summit… it confirms that we have taken the right stance,” Rasmussen told reporters.

US President Barack Obama said yesterday China and the US wanted the Copenhagen conference to culminate in a global accord that had “immediate operational effect.”

We “agreed to work toward a successful outcome in Copenhagen”, Obama said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing.