It has reached out to the two climate diplomats chairing the Bonn talks to step in and guide countries, including suggesting ideas, to produce a draft text that will encapsulate the global understanding on the way forward to tackle climate change.

Over 12 days, beginning Monday, the climate diplomats are expected to work together to reduce the 83-page draft text of the UN-sponsored 'Global Compact' to tackle climate change by finding ways to bridge different viewpoints. France, which is chairing the December round of the UN-sponsored climate talks in Paris, is pushing countries to bring down the text to a more manageable size.

The Bonn meeting is important. The French are keen to avoid a repeat of Copenhagen, which witnessed an inconclusive round of climate negotiations in 2009. Like the upcoming meet in Paris, the climate summit in the Danish capital was billed to usher in a new era in global action to tackle climate change. Six years later, the French are working overtime to ensure that a repeat of 2009 doesn't happen.

The French are of the view that one of the factors that led to the breakdown in Copenhagen was the failure to have worked sufficiently on a draft text, as a result adequate effort to help countries bridge divergent positions and arrive at workable consensus was not made.

With six months to the Paris negotiations, France wants to ensure that the Bonn round of meetings resolve as much of the differences as possible. The current length of the text can be attributed to the decision at the last round of talks in Geneva to ensure that all divergent views were included. This was part of the effort to build trust among countries and give countries confidence that the proposed global agreement was based on what countries wanted, and not imposed on them.

Top French diplomats, including French Foreign Minister Laurence Fabius, are working closely with the climate diplomats chairing the discussions in Bonn. Sources said the French have requested Dan Reifsnyder and Ahmed Djoghlaf, the chairpersons of the negotiations for post-2020 global agreement, or in UN climate speak the Adhoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP), to help produce a manageable text at the end of the Bonn meet.

The French, are understood to have suggested that Reifsnyder and Djoghlaf suggest and guide countries with ideas to resolve differences in positions. Sources close to the developments acknowledged that asking the chairpersons to take active role is a departure from the traditional approach in climate talks, where countries determine the process. The French argue that there is no time to go traditional by way of a line-by-line discussion of text—in its current form the text has nearly 4,300 lines. The aim is to reduce the 80-odd pages to 20-something at the end of the 12 days in Bonn.

In the past, climate diplomats chairing the negotiations have stepped in to distill the options presented by various countries and negotiating blocs to provide a text that is easier for countries to engage with. However, given the crucial nature of the current negotiations any impression that France is trying to push through an agreement text without evolving a consensus among countries could present a problem. This would explain why top French climate diplomats have been stressing that they they don't seek to impose an agreement text, but want countries to discuss and arrive at a text that they can support, while drawing attention to the paucity of time. Senior negotiators say that the route taken by France could present a middle path but extra care needs to be taken to ensure that no country feels that its concerns and are not being treated seriously. Bonn will prove to be an important test of the level of trust the French, who will lead the December talks, have been able to build among countries.

Despite the immense pressure to produce a working text, with few divergences, there has been a great deal of co-operation and collaboration among countries up till now. Bonn is the big test. "The talks in Geneva were good, the atmosphere was good, but you must remember that no decisions were taken, it was all about countries putting forward their views to ensure it is reflected in the text. The real test is Bonn, when decisions will have to be made, and the text shortened," a senior Indian negotiator explained.

The UN climate body has consistently argued that countries are more amenable to a global compact to tackle climate change now than they were six years ago. Exactly how amenable is something that will become evident in the course of the 12 days of climate talk, and as France's plan of nudging countries towards narrowing their differences unfolds.