Senior White House officials are telling ABC News that the Chinese won’t budge on the issue of transparency for emissions reductions, threatening the prospects of a deal on a global climate pact.

“We’ve done what we can here,” a senior White House official in Copenhagen, Denmark, tells ABC News. “The Chinese are dug in on transparency and are refusing to let people know they’re living up to their end of the agreement.” [...]

The original goal of the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was a legally binding international treaty reducing greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. It became clear months ago that at least partly because of the Chinese refusal to commit to serious greenhouse gas emission cuts, that would not happen.

Leaders from more than 190 countries have spent the last two weeks working on a more informal agreement, but that might not happen either.

There was hope for an agreement that could be followed on later, but that could be out the window at this point.

The President and world leaders are holed up in emergency meetings, looking for a deal. It’s genuinely unclear what will come out of this right now. There are some reports that an agreement is imminent, but one source talking about the new proposed text said to the New York Times that world leaders “are up there trying to work out whether they can sell a crap deal as a success or accept a failure.”

Stay tuned…