WARSAW: Almost 30 hours of overtime and intense negotiations, the United Nations sponsored Warsaw climate change talks came to a close with a deal that failed to resolve key contentious issues on addressing climate change, managed to keep every country at the table.

The intense and sometimes acrimonious negotiations yielded modest agreement on an international mechanism to address extreme and adverse impacts of climate change in vulnerable developing countries, a way forward on financing for developing countries and a deal to move ahead on fashioning a new global regime to address climate change.

"Warsaw has set a pathway for governments to work on a draft text of a new universal climate agreement so it appears on the table at the next UN climate change conference in Peru. This is an essential step to reach a final agreement in Paris in 2015," said Marcin Korolec, the former Polish environment minister, who presided over the talks on behalf of the Polish government. Alluding to the high intensity live wire nature of the talks, Korolec said that he is "keeping his fingers crossed for the Peruvian and French ministers", who will preside over the next two rounds of negotiations leading up to the new agreement.

Through Friday night and Saturday, there were moments when it seemed that the Warsaw talks would end in a stalemate or worse still fail to keep everyone on the table, as countries remained entrenched in their positions.

The deal hammered through nearly 48 hours of straight non-stop negotiations, which saw the use of the now familiar "huddle", culminated in a compromise that protected the red-lines or non-negotiable positions of all countries, and disappointed many particularly those from the civil society. For a climate summit, referred to in the UN parlance as COP (Conference of parties)

The most contentious negotiations were on the roadmap to the new global regime. India and its partners in BASIC, along with other developing countries stressed on the need for ensuring differentiation between developed and developing countries. The industrialised countries opposed tooth and nail retaining the firewall between developing and developed countries that has formed the basis of climate negotiations for the last 20 years.

China and India backed by a group of developing nations stressed on the need for retaining the differentiation that exists. The matter was resolved over two huddles spanning nearly 30 hours of back and forth talks. For both set of countries this was a non-negotiable position.

" It is astoninshing that China says that commitments should apply only to developed countries I feel like I am going into a time warp. That is folly," US lead negotiator Todd Stern said. The US has opposed differentiation and has pushed for a global regime that is "applicable to all". His views found support of the European Union as well. A long huddle later, a compromise was found, which "invites" all countries to prepare their "domestic preparations" to put forward their "intended nationally determined contributions, without prejudice to the legal nature" latest by 2015, when the talks will take place in Paris.

The wording papers over the existing differences and allows countries to resume the discussions on issues of how developing and developed countries will be treated under the new regime when negotiations resume next year. While the EU and US viewed the use of the word "contributions" as against "commitments" (which is the language used in the Convention Framework) as a signal of the "way forward" and a "step away from the Kyoto language", India argued that "the language doesn't make any judgments and the specifics would be discussed next year."