The United Nations (UN) today insisted that it should keep guiding talks on a new climate pact despite near-failure at a summit last month when a few countries agreed a low-ambition "Copenhagen Accord". 

Yvo de Boer, head of the UN's Climate Change Secretariat, said negotiations in 2010 would be based on UN talks launched in 2007 about how to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol and on involving all nations in action.

The three-page Copenhagen Accord, championed by big emitters including the United States and China, could however be a valuable spur towards agreement at the next UN meeting in Mexico in November, de Boer said. 

"I suppose in theory you could have a parallel structure but that strikes me as an incredibly inefficient exercise," he told a news conference webcast from Bonn of the prospects of also negotiating on the Copenhagen Accord.

 The Copenhagen Accord seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of an annual $100 billion in aid from 2020 for developing nations. 

But it omits setting cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2020 or 2050 to achieve the temperature goal. De Boer left open, however, whether Mexico would result in a legally binding treaty as urged by many nations. He spoke of "Mexico or later" for final texts meant to step up a drive to slow more heat waves, floods, species extinctions, powerful storms and rising ocean levels. - Reuters