Jairam Ramesh to make statement in Rajya Sabha on Copenhagen talks

Fresh from the world climate change talks which reached a last-minute non-binding deal, environment minister Jairam Ramesh will make a statement in the Rajya Sabha tomorrow where he is expected to say that India's sovereignty has been well protected.

Ramesh, on his return home after attending the nearly two-week-long 193-nation conference in Copenhagen, met Congress president Sonia Gandhi today, and briefed her on the provisional deal cobbled together by a small group of countries, including the US, India and China for fighting global warming.

"I will make a statement in Rajya Sabha at 12 noon tomorrow," Ramesh said here this evening, when his comments were sought on government's strategy in Parliament post-Copenhagen Accord. He declined to give any details.

Ramesh, who was part of the Indian negotiating team, earlier said on the outcome of the crucial negotiations in the Danish Capital, that the accord was "a good deal".

Indian officials have also noted that the US-brokered deal had addressed India's concerns adequately, although some improvements could be made.

"The red lines have been met," prime minister's Climate Change envoy Shyam Saran said, noting that India did not have to compromise on any of its fundamental stands on the issue.

Ramesh is likely to tell Rajya Sabha that India's sovereignty was well protected in Copenhagen, and that some of the red lines he had expressed in his speech in Parliament ahead of Copenhagen talks, have not been transgressed.

The minister is understood to have taken the view that the Copenhagen accord is the first good step, holding that it was good for India, the world and good for Earth.

Ramesh had earlier said the Indian side "had very fruitful discussions with Obama", and that "India has a good deal."

At Copenhagen, prime minister Manmohan Singh said there is no question of making India's unilateral commitments "internationally legally binding."

"Prime minister Manmohan Singh also said that there was no question of making our unilateral commitments internationally legally binding. We will reflect them in an international agreement in a suitable way, but we are not going to take any internationally legally binding commitments. That is simply not on the cards," Ramesh said in Copenhagen, quoting the prime minister as having said. Obama appreciated Singh's statement, the minister said.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meanwhile, described the Copenhagen Accord as "an agreement that will really not be the final word.

The head of the Nobel-winning UN panel of climate scientists said the outcome of the Copenhagen summit was a start, but urged countries to work quickly towards a legally binding pact.

"We will have build on it; we will have to make sure it moves quickly towards the status of a legally binding agreement, and therefore, I think the task for the global community is cut out," he told a TV channel.

"In the next few weeks and months, we will have to work very hard to see that, before the end of 2010, if not earlier, we get a binding agreement that really moves action in the direction we need," he said.

"We really have to move on rather quickly to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. There is growing evidence of the impacts of climate change, and if we delay action, these impacts are going to become much worse, far more serious," he warned.