Hopes that a legally binding climate change treaty will be signed at the UN's Copenhagen Summit were finally extinguished when senior officials and politicians echoed US predictions that agreement would be delayed for at least six months.
Negotiators gathered at the final round of talks in Barcelona conceded that a legally binding treaty would now not be delivered until next year, with a UN meeting in Mexico in December now the most likely venue for the Treaty to be finalised.
However, they insisted there were still hopes that a 'politically binding' agreement could be reached in Copenhagen that contains clear emission targets for industrialised countries, commitments to improve forest protection and expand carbon trading, and a timeline for delivering a legal treaty next year.
Speaking in the House of Commons, British energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband publicly conceded for the first time that a treaty would not be signed in Copenhagen, admitting that 'the UN negotiations are moving too slowly and not going well'.
'We would have preferred a full legal treaty, it has to be said,' he admitted. 'I think the important thing about the agreement we now seek in December is that while it may be a political agreement it must lead, on a very clear timetable, to a legally binding treaty.'
Miliband also insisted that he would continue to push for a detailed political agreement that contains emission reduction targets and can provide the framework for a legal treaty.
'I'll be completely clear about this, I think an agreement without numbers is not a great agreement. In fact, it's a wholly inadequate agreement,' he said. ' We must have reduction commitments from developed countries.
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