What's in a name? Months of legal wrangling, if that name defines a global pact to clamp down on climate change.

As nearly 200 nations try to put together an accord to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, they must decide whether that document will take the shape of a binding contract or a less formal agreement.

Unlike the brawls over how far and how fast each nation must reduce emissions, the fight over legal form doesn't grab headlines. But analysts say this most technical of issues has the potential to capsize the international climate negotiations, and will be a key focus of upcoming global warming talks next week.

"The question of the form of the agreement, this is really at the heart of the negotiations," said Nigel Purvis, president of Climate Advisers and a senior international climate negotiator in the Clinton administration.

The new accord could be any number of things -- a treaty, a protocol, an amendment or some combination of options. But ultimately, the debate comes down to this: Will a new global warming pact have the force of law behind it? If so, will only developed nations like America and Japan be bound? What about China and India?

Answers likely won't be forthcoming until the very last days of the international talks, which will culminate at a U.N. summit in Copenhagen this December. But analysts said they are hoping to see countries lay a few more cards on the table when delegates meet next week in Bonn, Germany, for a mid-year negotiating session.

"This is front and center on the agenda in Bonn," said Angela Anderson, an international policy expert with the Climate Action Network. "This is what they have to figure out."

Ultimately, the United States, European countries and other developed nations would like to see an agreement that holds every nation -- including fast-developing nations like China and Brazil -- to legally binding commitments, recognizing that countries at different levels of development might be asked to take different emission-reduction measures.

Developing countries want industrial nations committed

Developing countries, meanwhile, are dead set against that. They are calling for a pact that holds industrialized nations to binding commitments but allows developing nations to reduce emissions on a voluntary basis.

One option on the table is to craft the agreement as an amendment to the Kyoto Protocol. That 1997 treaty required 37 industrial nations to reduce emissions an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

But agreeing to such an amendment would be a tricky proposition for the United States, because it's not a party to Kyoto Protocol. Essentially, one of two things would have to happen. The first is that the United States ratify Kyoto -- an unlikely event.

The other, analysts said, is the creation of an entirely new agreement under a related treaty called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that belong to the Kyoto Protocol would vote to include the new agreement and then to amend the new convention.

"It's a contortionist way to deal with the fact that the United States is not a party to Kyoto," said Elliot Diringer, vice president of international strategies at the Pew Center on Climate Change.

And while some developing nations have pushed for the new agreement to be an amendment to Kyoto, Diringer and others described it as only a distant possibility.

U.S. wants Kyoto Protocol replaced, not amended

"Everybody understands that it's just a nonstarter for the United States, so no one is really pushing that," Anderson agreed.

Another possibility is that the new document be an agreement to the Convention of the Parties to the UNFCCC. But that carries its own set of concerns. Namely: the UNFCCC is not considered legally binding, so what kind of legal force would such a decision have?

The United States has ratified the UNFCCC, and some legal experts believe that a decision from that body would be as strict a legal instrument as a new treaty. But Diringer said he believes the law is ambiguous, adding, "Anything short of a legally binding agreement will be inadequate."

The Obama administration has already begun to explore the possible options. In a recent submission to the United Nations, officials outlined what they described as an "implementing agreement" that would "allow for legally-binding approaches" to come out of December's talks in Copenhagen.

Asked to explain the language, a State Department spokesman said the United States is suggesting an agreement that would implement various provisions of the convention. In an e-mail, the spokesman noted that U.S. officials purposely avoided calling the document a protocol, "although it shares some features of a protocol, namely that it allows for legally-binding procedures."

Meanwhile, the United States also bypassed the world "treaty," the spokesman said, because it is a generic term that lacks specificity.

Goal is something that survives Senate review

Jonathan Pershing, President Obama's deputy climate change envoy at the State Department, told activists in a conference call last month that the description of an "implementing agreement" was "intentionally not definitive." He noted that it leaves open a number of different possible legal forms.

European leaders, meanwhile, say they are still puzzling over America's choice of wording and wondering if it's an attempt to avoid having the U.S. Senate ratify the final text. Climate analysts and Obama administration officials argue that that's not the intention.

"That's a separate, purely internal decision that we need to make," Purvis said.

Added Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, "No matter what the form of it is, if the U.S. puts something on the table ... I think the Senate would want to review that."

Pershing, meanwhile, also told activists that the Obama administration is aiming for a final pact that can win two-thirds of the votes in the Senate.

Ultimately, he said, "We're looking to work with the Senate to make a ratified agreement happen."