Oppn slams climate accord; Govt says sovereignty won't be hurt

New Delhi, Dec 22 (PTI) Faced with a strident attack from
Opposition over the Copenhagen climate deal, the Indian
Government Tuesday asserted that the Accord will not affect
the country's sovereignty but admitted digression on the issue
of reporting about mitigation actions on tackling global
warming.

Informing the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Indian
Parliament) about outcome of last week's climate summit,
Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh sought to allay
apprehensions on account of a provision in the Accord for
"international consultations and analysis" as well as mention
of peaking for which no time-frame has been specified.
Rejecting the Opposition charges about compromising the
country's interests, he argued that India had to be flexible
as it, along with China, Brazil and South Africa, did not want
to be "responsible for failure" of the climate meet and become
"blame boys".
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Communist Party of
India-Marxist (CPI-M) and Communist Party of India slammed the
government and trashed the Accord as "disappointing", "a
compromise document" and "an attempt to jettison the Kyoto
Protocol and Bali Action Plan."
They said the Accord would open up India's voluntary
mitigation actions to foreign scrutiny and accused the
government of "spin-doctoring" like on the Sharm-el Sheikh
Joint Statement between India and Pakistan.
Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley said the government had
digressed from its commitments to Parliament.
Ramesh admitted to digression from its pre-Copenhagen
assurance on one aspect -- allowing provision for
"international consultation and analysis" rather than just
informing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) about domestic mitigation programmes.
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