Bonn, Germany - The UN biodiversity conference draws to an end Friday with delegates from more than 190 countries set to agree a "Bonn Roadmap" on sharing the benefits from biological diversity.

The Access and Benefit Sharing deal (ABS) is the main substantive agreement reached during the two-week conference held in the German city of Bonn.

Details of the ABS agreement, crucially stipulating which parts are legally binding and which voluntary, are to be thrashed out over the next two years.

The ABS deal is the forerunner to a deal on biopiracy - the patenting of indigenous remedies by the pharmaceutical industry without payments to the countries where they originate - to be agreed at the next conference in the Japanese city of Nagoya in 2010.

Participants to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) are also to agree documents on conserving tropical rainforests and the world's oceans for future generations.

Some 6,000 delegates from the 191 countries participating in the CBD were joined by hundreds of representatives of non-governmental organizations in Bonn. While almost all the world's economically powerful states have ratified the CBD, the United States has not. (dpa)