"U.N. climate talks starting in Mexico this month will seek a complex set of interlocking deals to slow global warming but will fall well short of a new treaty, the U.N.'s climate chief said on Wednesday.

Christiana Figueres said that governments had lowered their sights for the November 29-December 10 talks in Cancun, Mexico, after the Copenhagen summit in December 2009 failed to reach a sweeping new U.N. pact to slow climate change.

Even so, almost 200 nations faced a balancing act in Cancun, where governments were aiming for a less ambitious but still complex package deal.

"This is a complex process and it's going to be a slow process," she said of efforts to work out a new accord to slow increasing greenhouse gas emissions that threaten more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

In Cancun, governments will seek to agree measures including a new "Green Fund" to handle long-term aid, actions to help developing nations adapt to climate change, a new mechanism to share clean technologies and ways to protect tropical forests."

Alister Doyle reports for Reuters November 11, 2010.
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