New Delhi:
With just about a week left for the big UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, are India's top negotiators divided? That appears to be the case with environment minister Jairam Ramesh and the PM's special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran having spoken in contradictory voices.
Sources say Shyam Saran who has strongly advocated that India stick to it's stand of no legally binding emission cuts, will have the bigger role in negotiations.
While the environment minister Jairam Ramesh refused to talk about the climate change summit by saying, "I am not going to talk about Beijing or Copenhagen," at the same time, Shyam Saran discussed both Beijing and Copenhagen, making it clear that the host country's draft will have to be revised to incorporate the concerns of India, Brazil, South Africa and China which are now known as basic countries.
Denmark's draft essentially expects developing countries to follow the same yardsticks in curbing climate change as the rich countries.
"One of our challenges at Copenhagen will be an attempt by rich countries to up the decibel of their campaign against developing countries like India and China and remove the distinction between developed and developing," said Shyam Saran, PM's special envoy on climate change.
Sources say that if it comes down to making a political statement in Copenhagen, then Ramesh will hold the key, but Saran is likely to play a greater role in actual negotiations
PM Manmohan Singh is yet to decide whether he will attend the climate summit or not, but holding fort for India is a core team of 8-10 negotiators.
The team comprises of former environment secretary Dr Pradipto Ghosh, former Indian Ambassador to China, C Dasgupta, Ajay Mathur from the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, JM Mauskar, RR Rashmee, Vijai Sharma and RK Sethi from the environment ministry and a representative from the MEA as well. All of them are veterans with hundreds of hours of hard nosed negotiations.
Confident about this core team, Shyam Saran commented, "What we don't have in quantity, we hope to make up in quality."