PM in Copenhagen; seeks to preserve areas of consensus

Sagar Kulkarni
Copenhagen, Dec 18 (PTI) With consensus eluding climate
talks, Prime Minister of India Manmohan Singh arrived here
late Thursday night with a message to preserve the areas of
consensus on mitigation actions and finances and transfers of
green technologies to developing countries enshrined in the
Bali Action Plan.
Prior to the meeting of over 110 world leaders at the
climate change conference, Singh is scheduled to meet with his
Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao in a bid to consolidate
position of the developing countries for the plenary.
"The UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol embody the
international agreed regime for addressing the global
challenge of climate change," Singh had said in a statement
before departing for Denmark.
The 12-day 15th Conference of Parties, which concludes
here Friday, is expected to issue a short communique on the
need and urgency to arrest climate change instead of a
political statement which could form a basis that could be the
basis of a legally-binding agreement in the future.
US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, are among the 110
leaders expected to attend the conference.
The developing countries have been resisting attempts by
the rich nations to set aside the Kyoto Protocol, which sets
legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for
the industrialised nations. The 1997 protocol also has a
strong compliance mechanism built in which penalises the rich
nations if they do not meet emission reduction targets agreed
upon by them. (MORE) PTI