PM back after attending Copenhagen Summit

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today returned home after attending the UN Summit on Climate Change in Copenhagen where a US-brokered deal with India and other emerging countries that places no legally-binding emission cuts on developed countries ran into trouble.  

Singh delayed his departure by about five hours to hold negotiations with leaders of China, Brazil and South Africa.   

The Prime Minister had made it clear at the conference that future negotiations on tackling the menace should be based on equitable burden sharing as enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol and Bali mandate.  

The deal between the US and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) bloc is apparently a gain for developed countries which are required under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to take legally binding emission cuts.  

The Protocol expires on 2012 and the 194-nation Conference of Parties (COP) of the United Nations has apparently failed to get a word on its extension.  Indian negotiators -- Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh and Prime Minister's Special Envoy on Climate Shyam Saran -- acknowledged that the deal is not done until it is approved by the plenary.

However, Ramesh claimed it was "a good deal."   

But angry delegates of many countries like Tuvalu, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Cuba slammed the US-BASIC deal for showing them great "disrespect" by leaving them out of the drafting process and imposing their document on vast majority.