Political vacuum

"We would have preferred a full legal treaty, it has to be said," said Mr Miliband.

"I think the important thing about the agreement we now seek in December is that while it may be a political agreement it must lead, on a very clear timetable, to a legally binding treaty.

"Also, I'll be completely clear about this: I think an agreement without numbers is not a great agreement. In fact it's a wholly inadequate（不充分的，不适当的） agreement."

It remains unclear whether the US could put numbers forward in Copenhagen - on reducing emissions, or on financing for poorer countries - in the absence of domestic legislation.

Several EU delegates（代表） to the preparatory talks here in Barcelona - at the final round before the Copenhagen summit - say that the complexity of the treaty means that drawing up all the legal ingredients（作料，材料） is just too big a task to be finalised this year.

But South Africa's Alf Wills, who co-ordinates the G77/China bloc of developing countries on extending the Kyoto Protocol, suggested the real hurdle was political rather than logistical.

"We've got text - what we don't have is agreement on which parts of the text are the way to go," he told BBC News.

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