Agreement on new measures to combat global warming appears within reach at the UN climate talks in South Africa.
Draft documents issued overnight appear to address the concerns of all parties.
If they are adopted when official negotiations re-commence, a process leading to a new global deal by 2015 will begin early next year.
But with talks already into an extra day, there were warnings that ministers may have to leave – or may choose to leave – before signing off the package.
“The concern now is that time is extremely short,” warned EU climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard.
The draft proposes that the “roadmap” towards a new deal encompassing all countries would begin in the New Year and complete by 2015 at the latest.
That has been the central demand of the European Union and scores of countries vulnerable to climate impacts, including the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) and the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) bloc.
They were also pressing for the new agreement to be legally-binding, but the draft stops short of specifying a legal form – a concession to the US, which Aosis is sure to challenge.
If accepted, the agreement would also spell out – for the first time in the UN climate process – that there is a mismatch, a gap, between the pledges countries have already made on cutting emissions and the cuts necessary to keep global temperatures within 2C of pre-industrial levels.
Developing countries have insisted that EU nations must put their existing pledges on restricting emissions under the Kyoto Protocol; and this is also in the drafts.
That does not mean tougher cuts in Europe in the near future, but it would put EU pledges under an international legal framework.
Agreement on managing the Green Climate Fund, which will eventually gather and disburse finance amounting to $100bn per year to help poor countries develop cleanly and adapt to climate impacts, also appears within reach.
Official negotiations are likely to run through the day, and major objections may yet be raised.
There is also the fear that some ministers may decide it is convenient to leave without concluding negotiations.