Obama forges semblence of an accord

After a round of hectic diplomacy on Friday night, US President Barack Obama managed

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to cobble together an agreement with India, China, South Africa and Brazil or what’s called the Basic nations, but several countries took immediate objection to the deal at the plenary session, with Tuvalu, Venezuela and Cuba rejecting the document. Under the UN system, if a document is not accepted by even one party, it cannot be adopted. That may doom the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ to a failure.

Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, chairman of the G77+China group calling Copenhagen “a failure,” saying Sudan would “not accept a deal which will destroy Africa.”

The minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh said early in the morning after several hours of negotiations that it was “a good deal and satisfactory solution” saying Obama had spoken to prime minister Manmohan Singh, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, Brazilian president Inacio Lula da Silva and South Africa president Jacob Zuma for over one hour to come to the deal.

Ramesh said India and the other three countries had agreed to reporting and verification issues after China reached a compromise with the US. But he refused to elaborate on what the compromise was. He said the Indian prime minister had “put his foot down” on the question of a legally binding treaty that the European Union wanted to start negotiations on. “We cannot preside over the death of Kyoto Protocol,” Ramesh quoted Singh as having said. He said 40 countries were working out the details of the political text that would be tabled at the plenary for adoption.

Asked if African group or island states would accept the deal, he said they had their own viewpoint and it would be known at the plenary.

The European Union called it a “positive step, but clearly below our ambition.” The head of European Union executive Jose Manuel Barroso said it was not a perfect agreement, nor would it solve climate threat to mankind. “But it is a good start which needs to be developed.” The European representative also said that the deal was not good enough for EU to offer anything higher than cutting its emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

Mexican president Felipe Calderon who will host the next climate change conference in December next year said it was lower than the expectations, but it was a move in the right direction. UK Prime Minister called it a “good first step,” saying the deal would bring all countries national action plans to the international table and these would come under a strong monitoring regime. He said Europe would set up a monitoring and verification bureau soon. He said the deal was also a step towards forging a legally binding treaty next year.

Earlier, Lumumba called it the “worst development in climate change history.” He said a gross violation had been committed against the poor in adopting the document and against the tradition of transparency. At the plenary called to adopt the document shaped by the US and Basic nations,

When the plenary met, conference president Lars Lokke Rasmussen read said that a deal had been forged by a group of countries and the plenary was being given one hour to consult among various groups. But several interventions made it clear that the time was not enough while others outrightly rejected the documents. Several countries called it violation of the UN charter.

There was also widespread criticism of the US-Basic deal from the non-government organisations. “Copenhagen has been an abject failure. Justice has not been done,” said Friends of the Earth Internatinal. ActionAid said president Obama had to should most of the blame for the “failure of the conference to achieve a meaningful global deal.”