Developing countries reacted furiously on Tuesday to leaked documents from the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) that shows unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries.

It says people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals. The document also hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

The so-called Danish text leaked to the Guardian was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week.

It is being done in secret. Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week. It effectively is the end of the UN process, said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.

The leaked document would abandon the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich countries should take firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act.

It was described by one senior diplomat as a very dangerous document for developing countries.