Dec. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Delegates to a United Nations climate change conference are grappling with how to narrow the talks for a new international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming, a UN official said today.

Governments from almost 200 countries agreed to set up a task force to speed decisions on a deadline for negotiations to replace the emissions-limiting Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The group will look at what key points should be considered in future talks, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The recommendations will be presented to senior government officials set to arrive on the Indonesian island of Bali next week. Developing countries say more attention should be paid to ways of transferring clean technologies to them, because they are the most vulnerable to rising temperatures and sea levels. The U.S. is pushing developing economies such as China and India to commit to limits on emissions.

It will be a ``huge challenge over the next couple of days to bridge what are quite different positions,'' de Boer, whose organization is overseeing the talks, told reporters in Bali.

The task force will be headed by negotiators Howard Bamsey of Australia and Sandea De Wet of South Africa, de Boer said later in an interview. They will probably work on crafting the preliminary outline of what officials are calling a ``Bali roadmap'' for a new treaty through Dec. 11, de Boer said.

Agreeing to Start

A main sticking point so far is getting developing countries such as India to agree that talks should start now. Many of the nations believe more work needs to be done under the current Kyoto accord to address adaptation to climate change and moving clean technologies into poor countries.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, which has been ratified by all industrialized countries except the U.S., funds to help poor nations adapt to climate change are to be made available through the so-called Clean Development Mechanism.

Resources for adaptation through the mechanism stand at about $36 million, with the potential to generate as much as $500 million a year after 2012, de Boer said.

Developing nations will need $50 billion a year to adapt to climate change, and rich countries should foot the bill, the U.K. development charity Oxfam said.

The Bali talks so far don't bode well for the world's poorest nations, said Meena Raman, chairman of Friends of the Earth International, an Amsterdam-based network of 5,000 local groups of environmental activists.

``Just witnessing the last few days, we don't see leadership coming from the North,'' Raman said. There's especially concern that the U.S. and Japan are ``trying to scuttle the movement of this issue,'' she said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kim Chipman in Denpasar, Indonesia, at kchipman@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 5, 2007 22:07 EST