UNITED NATIONS, (Reuters) – Negotiators at global  climate change talks are not delivering on promises by their  leaders to clinch a deal at a key meeting in Copenhagen in  December, a top U.N. environmental official said yesterday.  

Despite progress on some aspects of a deal to brake the  rapid growth of planet-warming carbon emissions, core issues  remain unresolved, said Janos Pasztor, head of U.N.  Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s climate change support team.  

A U.N. climate change summit last month produced promises  of action by top emitters China and the United States as well  as dozens of other states, and Ban said the world was one step  closer to a deal at the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen negotiations.  

But two weeks of talks that ended in Bangkok on Friday  yielded little progress on the amount of cash available to  poorer nations and the size of rich nations’ commitments to cut  greenhouse gas emissions, Pasztor said.  

“There is still a disconnect between what national leaders  say in summit meetings and what their negotiators offer on the  negotiating floor,” he told a news conference.  

Pasztor noted there were now only five more negotiating  days left — in Barcelona from Nov. 2-6 — before the  Copenhagen meeting.
  
“Countries must maintain the positive momentum of the  (September U.N.) summit and translate that into concrete  proposals that can advance progress toward an agreement,” he  said.
  
Copenhagen is meant to agree on a broader framework to  expand or replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the U.N.’s main  weapon in the fight against climate change. Kyoto, whose first  phase ends in 2012, obliges 37 industrialized countries to meet  binding economy-wide emissions targets between 2008-12.
  
Pasztor said there had been progress in Bangkok on ways to  help poorer nations adapt to the effects of climate change,  transfer of clean-energy technology, and reducing emissions  from deforestation.  

 But his concerns about the deadlock on core issues were the  latest gloomy assessment in the run-up to Copenhagen. European  Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said on Friday he was  “very worried” about the talks. 
 
“At some point the leaders will have to be engaged in  coming up with a solution to these issues themselves, because  they are very difficult and they have impacts on the economy as  a whole,” Pasztor said.