Twenty-seven world leaders and their senior aides have gone into seclusion to try to hammer out a political climate agreement as the deadline for the end of the COP15 Climate Summit rapidly approaches.

“But we are a long way from our goal,” says one source at the negotiations.

President Obama is taking part in the meeting, following an hour-long tête-à-tête with China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao which the White House termed ‘constructive’.

The United States and China are key to an agreement, both as the world’s main economies and greenhouse gas emitters and also as prime representatives of the industrialised and developing nations.