Apparently, it is historically true that every COP Climate Change summit starts out well, but by the end of the first week things start to go ugly. Well, Copenhagen 2009 is, of course, an exception – things went messy there from the third day (or was it the second?)

COP16 in Cancun, Mexico, seems to be on track to follow the trend. By the end of the first week, there was already talk in the corridors (and after that in the media) that the Mexican government had “a secret document” other than the main tracks of discussion. Everyone (and a few more) have come out and denied the text ever existed, but the media loves the story and ran with it.

When that exact same situation happened last year, all hell broke lose in the negotiations.

On the other hand, the so called ALGA group )Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua) are starting to come up with fierce statements. They threatened to walk out of the discussions if no reference to the Kyoto Protocol is made in the first draft text about to be released.

Add to that the fact that Japan (and possibly Canada, Russia and a few out countries) do not want to subscribe to a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol (whose first phase expires in 2012), and you have got an explosive situation waiting to happen.

But according to the UNFCCC secretariat there are some positive signs coming out of the negotiations. Apparently the Kyoto Protocol is mentioned in the draft text. Carbon capture and sequestration, a controversial issue, will probably find its way into the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Market (CDM) mechanism. While controversial, UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres sees it as an important, trust-building step.

There won’t be a legally binding agreement in Cancun of course, just as we’ve known all along, but lets hope negotiations don’t break down during the second week. Some parties are set to on a collision path that looks like ot could turn rather ugly.

Now it is time to watch the second, high-profile week which starts tomorrow – this is when things really start to take shape.