PM travels to Copenhagen as climate talks remain deadlocked

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will travel to Copenhagen on Thursday for the climate talks amid India's receding hopes for clinching a legal framework to arrest global warming even as it said that ambitious emission cuts by rich nations was at the "heart of success".

Singh is expected to make an intervention at the plenary of the 15th Conference of Parties on Friday which would be addressed by Denmark Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon.

World leaders, including US President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, will also be at the plenary where they would try to reach a political agreement to tackle global warming.

"The developed countries need to come up with ambitious emission reduction numbers. This is at the heart of the outcome at Copenhagen and will be critical to its success. The numbers put on the table, so far, are unfortunately disappointing," Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters.

Rao gave enough hints that the climate talks would continue beyond Copenhagen and an agreement may be within reach before the next climate conference in Mexico in 2010.

Rao said the Chairman of the Conference of Parties was working towards a political agreement and not a legally binding agreement which would set members on track for a comprehensive legal framework in due course during 2010.

The fate of the climate change talks hung in a balance as differences persisted between rich and developing nations over taking legally binding carbon emission cuts.

While the industrialised nations want key developing countries like China and India to agree to emission cuts, the emerging economies are citing historical responsibility and insisting that the rich nations should take lead as it was they who had created the problem.

Rao insisted that India was not "a naysayer" and will play a "constructive role" in the climate change talks.

"From the current state of negotiations, it appears that the developed countries are not prepared for a comprehensive outcome at Copenhagen that would bind them to fulfil the commitments for emission reductions under Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)," she said.

"What we have to ensure is that the whole template of the negotiations should not be shifted, should not mutate in a manner that does not serve the cause we have fought so hard for," she said.

On the Alliance of Small Island States adopting a different stand at the climate talks, she said India would like to see "full harmonisation" of positions among developing countries.

India has already declared that it would consider a carbon intensity cut of 20 to 25 percent by 2020, but has made it clear that it would not be forced into accepting legally binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.