The UN climate conference has approved part of the draft deal early Saturday morning despite Bolivia's objection.

The measures in the documents were widely supported by participants in an informal session late Friday, with applause for Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, who chaired the session.

"The work presented was the result of a year of consultation," Espinosa said in the closing speech of the informal session. "It was elaborated with the voice and input of all nations."

Most speakers said the document was partial but still represented progress at the climate summit held in the resort city Cancun on Mexico's Caribbean coast.

"It is not perfect and it is not a done deal, but let us accept it and let's move forward," said Karl Hood, Grenada's minister for environment and foreign affairs.

Grenada's opinion is significant because it has the presidency of the 41-member Alliance of Small Island States, the nations most likely to suffer first from global warming.

Oceans are rising at twice the rate of the 20th century, researchers say, and Pacific islanders report they're already losing shoreline and settlements to encroaching seas.

"The parties have made good efforts in these negotiations," said Xie Zhenghua, deputy head of China's National Development and Reform Commission. "We have been satisfied because the negotiations have been guided by the principle of common but differentiated responsibility."

Both the United States and the European Union spoke in favor of the agreement during the meeting.

"I think this text points the way forward," said Todd Stern, the US representative in the climate talks. "Let us now do what it takes to get this deal done."

Connie Hedegaard, the Danish diplomat who represents the 27-member EU, praised the nations for their commitment to reaching an agreement and also offered the bloc's conditioned support.

Positive statements were also made by a number of countries including Australia, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, the Philippines, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Japan and India. But negative voices were heard from Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuban and Bolivia.

Among the dissenters, Bolivia completely opposed the drafts by the working groups of 50 nations.

"Bolivia is not disposed to sign a document which signifies a temperature increase beyond two degrees Celsius," said Bolivia's delegate Pablo Solon. "This document needs to be broadly discussed."

Solon insisted that all developed nations sign a second Kyoto Protocol commitment period with deeper cuts than the 5-percent on average by the end of 2012 in the original 1996 agreement.

But Japan, Canada and Russia have expressed public opposition to doing so, and the US did not sign for the first period.

Earlier Friday, Mexico, as president of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, published a new draft document covering long term commitment actions that included detailed financing plans but no schemes for binding emissions cuts.

The revised protocol draft published at the start of the day called for emissions cuts of up to 40 percent and urged nations to higher their ambition in cutting carbon.

However, the text contained no legally binding language to ask nations to make promises.

The UNFCCC nations' commitments fall about 40 percent short of what is needed to keep average global temperatures under two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to a November United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) report.

The 15th climate summit, held in the Danish capital of Copenhagen a year ago, backed the two-degree target, which was widely recognized as the level at which dangerous environmental damage begins. Many nations are pushing for a 1.5-degree limit.

(Xinhua News Agency December 11, 2010)