Singh, Wen hold talks ahead of plenary at the climate summit

I / Copenhagen December 18, 2009, 14:11 IST

As negotiators struggled to finalise a draft for the climate summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao today held talks in a bid to consolidate the position of developing countries ahead of the world leaders' meeting here.

In his opening remarks during his meeting with Wen, Singh recalled that the two countries have been cooperating at various fora, including the G-20. "We need to continue the cooperation," said the Prime Minister, who arrived in the Danish capital late last night to take part in the high-level segment of the 12-day UN climate talks.

Besides Singh and Wen, US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicholas Sarkozy are among the 110 world leaders who would attend the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) on its final day today.

The developing countries have been resisting attempts by the rich nations to set aside the Kyoto Protocol, which sets legally binding greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for industrialised nations.

The 1997 protocol also has a strong compliance mechanism which penalises the rich nations if they do not meet emission reduction targets agreed upon by them.

Singh, during his talks with Wen, expressed the hope that they would be able to take their strategic partnership further.

He said he believed that the importance of the Sino-India relations was underlined by the fact that the two leaders were meeting again now on the sidelines of COP, recalling that they had earlier met in Thailand on the margins of the ASEAN summit in October.