Parties at U.N.-sponsored climate change talks here said Dec. 17 that hopes for a comprehensive agreement had all but dried up. Two high-ranking officials close to the process told BNA that negotiations in contact groups had shifted from seeking a deal on a wide array of issues to securing agreement in a few key areas.rnWith one full day of talks left, French President Nicolas Sarkozy used his address to the main plenary to call for the conference president, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, to convene a closed-door meeting of leaders from each geographic region to broker an 11th-hour agreement. Several other heads of state and heads of government told the plenary an agreement is still possible at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
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