Negotiators were entering another late night of talks in Cancun, Mexico, hammering out details after making headway on key issues including the shape of a fund to help poor countries worst hit by steadily rising temperatures.

After last year's widely criticized Copenhagen summit, host Mexico has focused on creating the building blocks of a future agreement. China and India have long refused calls for binding action, saying that rich nations bear historic responsibility for carbon emissions blamed for climate change.

But India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh offered a shift, saying that his country was ready to look at a future binding deal -- although not yet.

"All countries must take binding commitments under an appropriate legal form," Ramesh told AFP.

He said India would wait to see the shape of a future agreement "because we don't know the content," including whether countries would face penalties for non-compliance or a monitoring system.

"So let's wait. Let us talk about it," Ramesh said.

China has also called for flexibility in the Cancun talks, including on outside monitoring of its climate actions. But it has repeated that it opposes a binding treaty.

With the talks previously scheduled to close on Friday, Japan said that they may enter another day as it held firm on a key dispute in Cancun -- on the future of the landmark Kyoto Protocol.

The treaty requires wealthy nations -- so-called Annex I -- to cut emissions through 2012. In the absence of another treaty, the European Union has called on countries to consider extending Kyoto.

Japan says the Kyoto Protocol is unfair and ineffective by covering only 30 percent of emissions and not the top two polluters. China has no obligations as a developing nation, while the United States -- technically Annex I -- rejected the treaty in 2001.

"It is like the Annex I countries are the soccer players and the non-Annex I countries and the United States are spectators in the stand. However we work and score... we are criticized," Japanese official Akira Yamada said.

"We would like all the major emitters to go down to this playing field," he told reporters.

Yamada voiced hope that all sides would come up with acceptable language and insisted that other disputes -- not Kyoto -- were holding up progress.

Australia's Climate Change Minister Greg Combet urged delegates not to get bogged down in process and offered flexibility in continuing the Kyoto Protocol.

"It is imperative for the credibility of this process that we are able to make progress here," Combet said.

South African President Jacob Zuma, who will lead the talks in December 2011 in Durban, voiced hope that the Cancun conference would set up the "building blocks" for a new treaty.

"We dare not lose this opportunity," Zuma told reporters.

But Bolivian President Evo Morales, who has emerged as a leading critic of the UN-led talks, demanded more far-reaching action.

"If we here throw the Kyoto Protocol into the garbage dump, we would be responsible for economy-cide, for ecocide -- indeed, for genocide -- as we would be harming humanity as a whole," Morales said from the podium of the conference, receiving loud applause.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous leader, called for an agreement that protects native populations and called for climate assistance to poor countries at a level "equivalent to the budget that developed countries spend on defense, security and warfare."

Wealthy economies -- including the European Union, Japan and the United States -- have pledged to help provide 30 billion dollars in near-term assistance to poor nations, along with 100 billion dollars a year in the future.

Negotiators said they saw steady progress in setting up the architecture of a future climate fund. A remaining sticking point is whether to include a role for international bodies, such as the World Bank, in administering aid.

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