French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius (pictured) has said a new, more streamlined draft of a global deal to fight climate change should be ready on Wednesday.

Presiding over the conference, Fabius said that what would be the next step towards a final agreement should be agreed upon by 1pm Paris time (1200 UTC). The new draft was expected to be shorter than the previous one, reflecting progress made during the past few days of negotiations and leaving two days for ministers to work out the most difficult issues ahead of Friday's deadline.

"It will be an important step, I hope, but not yet the final result," Fabius said.

The success of the talks, involving 195 nations, was expected to hinge on whether agreement can be reached on several key issues which have plagued negotiations for the past two decades, including how to review progress in slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Jennifer Morgan, climate analyst at the Washington-based World Resources Institute, said the talks had reached the stage of the "dirty work" of negotiating.

"You are finally starting to see the really hard bargaining and arguing that has to happen. It is a good thing, because otherwise they would still be standing by their positions," Morgan, an observer at the talks, was quoted as saying by news agency AFP.

The conference has been billed as the last chance for the world to avert the worst consequences of climate change caused by humanity's emissions of greenhouse gases, including worsening droughts, floods and storms as well as rising sea levels.

se/ (AFP, dpa, AP)