South Africa is under pressure to secure a binding agreement when it hosts a United Nations (UN) climate change conference in Durban in December, Business Day newspaper in Johannesburg reported on Monday.

As host for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC ), South Africa hopes to follow on the relative progress made at the 2010 negotiations in Cancun, Mexico.

Negotiators left the Cancun talks with some sense of accomplishment after the disappointment of the 2009 UN climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.

South Africa's international relations minister Maite Nkoana- Mashabane told the newspaper that South Africa is under greater pressure than Mexico to secure a binding agreement because it is a member of more forums.

These include the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa) bloc, and the Group of 20, which contributes 85 percent of global gross national product, 80 percent of world trade.

In this context South Africa is seen as having more clout.

Nkoana-Mashabane told a stakeholder discussion group in Midrand, outside Johannesburg, that substantive formal negotiations leading up to COP 17 will begin in June.

This means the South African cabinet has no room to maneuver, she said "Our mandate is a comprehensive, legal, binding agreement. "

She added that South Africa also has an international reputation as a country born of multilateral negotiation.

The South African minister returned last week from Mexico where she met the FCCC secretariat, the Mexican government and representatives from the developed and developing world to gain insight into their expectations for the Durban conference.

"They confirmed South Africa is on the right path ... and that all the challenges South Africa faces in COP 17 need the multilateral thinking South Africa is known for," she said.

Business Day reported that the U.S. has stated it is not willing to sign on the dotted line unless China, which last year overtook Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, does so too.

Also adding to the pressure, the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period ends in 2012 and the world is looking to South Africa to wangle a second commitment period.

Adopted in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol started international collaboration on the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

Its first commitment period ends on Dec. 31, 2012.

Zaheer Fakir, acting deputy director-general of South Africa's department of environmental affairs, said that if there is no agreement on a second commitment period, the world will lose the rules-based system that governs greenhouse gas stabilization.

South Africa needs to gain clarity on the governance and flow to technology and financial support for adaptation, especially for developing countries, Fakir said.