India has major stake in success of Copenhagen: Manmohan

Port of Spain, Nov 28 (IANS) With ten days to go for the Copenhagen conference, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to push for 'a balanced, equitable and ambitious outcome' at the 192-nation UN convention on climate change next month.

In his separate bilateral talks with Sarkozy and Brown on the sidelines of the Commonwealth summit, Manmohan Singh Friday stressed 'emphatically that India has a major stake in the success of the Copenhagen conference,' India's external affairs ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash said here.

The prime minister told the British and French leaders that it was in India's interests to see a successful outcome at the Dec 7-18 Copenhagen confernece on climte change, the spokesperson said.

They all agreed on a balanced, ambitious and equitable outcome at the Copenhagen conference, Prakash said.

Elaborating on India's position, the prime minister informed them about a slew of unilateral and voluntary mitigation actions taken by India to curb greenhouse gas emissions and alluded to India's national action plan on combating climate change.

The prime minister mentioned that there were several proposals from interlocutors and India was looking at them with an open mind, Prakash said.

Manmohan Singh reiterated the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities of developed and developing countries for curbing carbon emissions and stressed on the transfer of technologies and resources to enable developing countries to combat climate change.

Only adequate transfer of technologies and resources can help developing countries in the process of tackling climate change, the prime minister told Sarkozy and Brown.

The 53-nation Commonwealth summit of former colonies of Britain opened here Friday with a renewed push towards achieving 'political consensus' on climate change weeks ahead of the UN nations convention in Copenhagen.

Putting climate change on top of the agenda at the Commonwealth conference, Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma stressed that the Commonwealth Heads of Government Body (CHOGM) will make a restatement of 'shared responsibilities towards the preservation of our planet.'

The Commonwealth summit is expected to send a strong consensus message from the Commonwealth to the Copenhagen conference about the need for a balanced and equitable outcome.

India has consistently maintained it wants developed countries to take deeper cuts and refused to accept any reduction target on grounds that such target would affect prospects of economic growth in developing countries.

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