UN climate talks have spilled into an extra day as negotiators battle in Lima to end a stand-off between rich and developing nations on the underpinnings of a world carbon-cutting pact.
A years-old dispute over sharing responsibility for curbing greenhouse gases re-emerged to drive the 12-day negotiations into a familiar end-phase of poker-like holdout, clouding prospects for the ambitious environmental accord.
The talks had been scheduled to end on Friday, but ran into the small hours as officials and ministers horse-traded over elements of a draft text.
At about 3am on Saturday, the meeting secretariat announced an official postponement until 10am of the closing session of a working group tasked with finalising the document.
This must happen before the official adoption of agreements can take place in a broader plenary meeting.
Negotiators have to whittle the draft down to a consensus text to guide a process next year of declaring national pledges for curbing Earth-warming fossil fuel emissions.
"We are almost there. We need to make just a final effort," Peruvian Environment Minister Manuel Pulgar-Vidal pleaded with negotiators on Friday afternoon.
"We need to take political decisions."
Underlying the gridlock is the principle of "differentiation" - a bugbear of the years-long attempt to bring all the world's nations into the fold of a single mechanism for braking planet-threatening climate change.
Developing nations insist the West must bear a bigger burden for carbon cuts, having started decades earlier to pollute their way to prosperity.
But rich countries point the finger at developing giants like China and India furiously burning coal to power their rapid growth.
Developing nations further demand that pledges incorporate not only action on reducing carbon emissions, but also financial help and adaptation aid to shore up their climate defences.
Pledging rules must be finalised in the Peruvian capital to allow countries to start their submissions from the first quarter of next year.
These national contributions will be at the core of a global climate pact that nations have agreed to sign in Paris in December 2015, to enter into effect by 2020, seeking to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels.
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