With ministers pouring in here for the high-level segment of the UN climate negotiations, rumours swirled over the weekend about the host Qatar asking ministers from select countries to lead talks on specific issues that remained unresolved. On some previous occasions, the hosts, who act as presidency of the meeting, have attempted to short-circuit the process of negotiations by getting the ministers to negotiate new draft texts, keeping aside the documents being thrashed out by the negotiators. If the host takes the plunge and decides to keep the list of countries it consults restricted to a select few, it is referred to as ‘green rooms’–a process followed in WTO talks but not taken to kindly at climate conferences. The hosts have tried softer versions of a green room mechanism since the Copenhagen summit. For instance, in Cancun, in 2010, host Mexico asked select ministers to create fresh negotiating text on select unresolved issues. But, it left the door open for any country to contribute to the discussion. The transparency nevertheless suffered at Cancun as a flurry of activity in parallel sessions and lack of clarity about where the new texts were emerging from left several small countries dismayed.