Last minute effort

After US President Barack Obama's speech, Premier Wen held talks with him in a meeting room just behind the summit venue.

The two leaders agreed that the participating countries of the conference should achieve a political resolution as soon as possible and continue cooperation on climate change.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (L) meets with US President Barack Obama in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 18, 2009. [Xinhua]

As soon as the talks ended, Wen asked members of the Chinese delegation to inform the Group of 77 and other BASIC countries of the Sino-American talks, aiming to speed up negotiations between developing and developed countries.

Developing and developed countries discussed the final document, but failed to make any progress as a result of divergence of views, even when the Copenhagen climate change conference was scheduled to conclude hours earlier.

Some countries were drafting announcement of the conference's possible failure, and certain foreign leaders even made irresponsible criticism against China.

At the Bella Center, the venue of the conference, journalists started to pack luggage. People around the world were wondering how and when the Danish government would declare failure of the largest and highest level climate change conference ever in human history.

It was Premier Wen who played a key role in the last-minute attempt to exchange ideas and reach consensus.

Wen believed that it was impossible to reach a legally binding agreement at that time, while no country was willing to be responsible for the failure if the conference yielded no result in the end.

"As long as there is hope of one percent, we should not give up and must instead make 100 percent of effort," he told the Chinese delegation.

Wen decided to meet other leaders of the BASIC countries again and make a final attempt.