Remember the Copenhagen Summit climate change debacle?

The terrific Spiegel Online has fascinating material said to be extracted from tape-recordings of the key meeting between Merkel/Brown/Sarkozy/Obama and the Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister, there because the Chinese Prime Minister did not deign to join the gathering:

Now, for the first time, SPIEGEL is in a position to reconstruct the decisive hour-and-a-half meeting on that fateful Friday. Audio recordings of historical significance, in the form of two sound files that total 1.2 gigabytes in size and that were created by accident, serve as the basis for the analysis. The Copenhagen protocol shows how the meeting Gordon Brown called "the most important conference since the Second World War" ended in a diplomatic zero.

What this article shows is precisely how human these encounters are at the very top.

Leaders in such a context show themselves for what they really are. Above all, it comes down to personal trust. As expressed by how they answer very simple policy questions.

The mountains of analysis and noise generated in the months and years culminating in the Copenhagen meeting boiled down to one simple question:

How far is China prepared to go to cut emissions if the West makes serious cuts?

And the answer came:

Not far at all!

Hence Obama, desperate for a success, deftly heaved his key European policy allies overboard:

… Obama stabbed the Europeans in the back, saying that it would be best to shelve the concrete reduction targets for the time being. "We will try to give some opportunities for its resolution outside of this multilateral setting … And I am saying that, confident that, I think China still is as desirous of an agreement, as we are."

At the end of his little speech, which lasted 3 minutes and 42 seconds, Obama even downplayed the importance of the climate conference, saying "Nicolas, we are not staying until tomorrow. I’m just letting you know. Because all of us obviously have extraordinarily important other business to attend to."

Some in the room felt queasy. Exactly which side was Obama on? He couldn’t score any domestic political points with the climate issue. The general consensus was that he was unwilling to make any legally binding commitments, because they would be used against him in the US Congress. Was he merely interested in leaving Copenhagen looking like an assertive statesman?

It was now clear that Obama and the Chinese were in fact in the same boat, and that the Europeans were about to drown…

Glug. Glug.

… the meeting did not reconvene. The key decisions were made elsewhere — without the Europeans. The Indians had reserved a room one floor down, where Prime Minister Singh met with his counterparts, Brazilian President Lula da Silva and South Africa President Jacob Zuma. Wen Jiabao was also there.

Shortly before 7 p.m., US President Obama burst into the cozy little meeting of rising economic powers.

At that meeting, everything that was important to the Europeans was removed from the draft agreement, particularly the concrete emissions reduction targets.

Later on, the Europeans — like the other diplomats from all the other powerless countries, who had been left to wait in the plenary chamber — had no choice but to rubberstamp the meager result.

All of which just goes to reinforce a key psychological feature of international and other negotiations: those who want a deal usually are in a much weaker position than those who do not.

How does that play across to Cameron v Clegg?

Who really wants what?