Talks at the Cop30 climate summit in Brazil were disrupted on Thursday after a fire broke out in the venue, triggering an evacuation just as negotiators were hunkering down to try to land a deal to strengthen international efforts to address climate change.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, had appealed earlier in the day for a deal from the summit, welcoming calls from some for clarity on the hotly disputed subject of weaning the world off fossil fuels.
Officials said the fire broke out in the pavilion area of the conference centre in Belém, Brazil.
Delegations holding meetings in their rooms nearby were evacuated and the UN said no one was hurt, as security personnel ordered thousands of delegates in the sprawling building to go outside.
Firefighters controlled the blaze, but the entire venue had to be cleared from shortly after 2pm local time (5pm GMT). The Guardian was told it was likely to be several hours at least before any delegates were allowed to return.
The incident threw a carefully choreographed series of meetings into confusion. The presidency was preparing a new draft text of the “mutirão” decision, a central plan of the hoped for outcome of Cop30, and one which until Thursday contained a potential commitment to start drawing up a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels.
The presidency was holding a series of crunch meetings with the main negotiating groups.
The Aosis group of countries (Alliance of Small Island States) had been due to meet the presidency shortly before 4pm, but that was cancelled.
The EU was due to hold a ministerial coordination meeting at 6pm prior to meeting the presidency at 9pm, but that timetable was thrown into doubt.
The severity of the disruption at this stage of the talks is likely to make it impossible to stick to the Brazilian timetable, and may push the talks, which are scheduled to finish on Friday evening, well into overtime.