Alan Fisher
Mexico here they come

With a wish for 'happy holidays' and a bang of a gavel, this marathon Copenhagen summit drew to a close. It had been two years in the planning. There had been two weeks of, at times, angry debates. There was no consensus, only bitterness and anger at the deal done between America and the world's emerging economies.
     They had talked through the night discussing the agreement hailed as the 'Copenhagen Accord'. Exhausted delegates gave emotional speeches; in some cases, diplomatic niceties were set aside.
     Lumumba Di-Aping is the charismatic, some would say abrasive, chairman of the the G77 + China group which represents most of the world's poorer nations. In the early hours of Saturday he provoked anger when, in his slow and measured tone, he expressed his view: 'You cannot ask Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries. This is devoid of any sense of responsibility, morality and it is a solution based on the values which in our opinion channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces'. 
     The link with the holocaust was quickly condemned, but later, in the halls of this sprawling centre, one delegate who would never consider himself a friend of the man from Sudan told me quietly: 'He was wrong to invoke the comparison, but he's right. Millions will die because of this decision'.
     There were those who were prepared to sign up to the principles contained in the deal, even though they were poor on targets, vague on money and barely binding. Margerehe Segervik from Norway summed up the feeling of many: 'We believe that one step forward is better than two steps back. That's why we support this document even if it's not perfect'. 
    The UN Secretary General, the genial Bank Ki-Moon, looked exhausted. He joked that he had slept for only two hours in the past 48, hadn't had dinner and had missed breakfast trying to secure a deal. For him this was not a bad deal, but a significant step forward. He told the final session: 'I know that most developed and developing countries are not happy but I believe that through adoption of the Copenhagen Accord you will be able to get everything you need'.
     What does it all mean? The accord seals a commitment to limit global temperature rises to no more than two degrees celcius, but sets no firm targets. It creates a fund of billions of dollars to help poor and vulnerable countries fight climate change. And it allows an international exchange of information on carbon emission cuts. The summit agreed to try to reach a legally binding deal sometime in 2010, but given the difficulties of reaching even this limited deal, that seems more an aspiration than a genuine hope.
     The UN's climate change envoy, Yvo de Boer, who had spent the past 12 days trying to steer negotiations and keep them on track, summed up the frustration in a simple sentence. Looking forward to the next major meeting in this series, Cop16, he said: 'I think we've got to achieve in Mexico what we failed to achieve here'.

Alan Fisher is an Al Jazeera correspondent