Team India tries to paper over cracks,Saran to brief PM

But this will mean that the full-strength Indian team will be present no longer than a day during the first week of negotiations. On Thursday,Shyam Saran,head of India’s negotiating team,is returning home to brief the Prime Minister who is slated to attend the Heads of States meeting at the end of the conference.

One of the negotiators said the reduced emission intensity rate target was never discussed with other negotiators in the team — their main grouse is that they have been kept uninformed about government decisions which have often led to embarrassing situations for them at the climate meetings.

Some of them seem to be uncomfortable with the “flexible” approach that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has been pushing. After Ramesh’s announcement in Parliament of an unilateral offer to cut India’s emission intensity by 20-25 per cent by the year 2020 over the 2005 levels,Ghosh and Dasgupta protested and even threatened to quit. They were persuaded by Ramesh not to do so.

Dasgupta said: “I have met the Minister and on the basis of certain assurances offered by him,I will fly to Copenhagen.”

“My concern was our rejection of international verification or review of our domestically-funded mitigation actions. The last is important because,unlike many other international agreements,the climate change convention does not require reviews or any other type of consultations for domestic actions of developing countries,” Dasgupta said.

Jairam Ramesh said: “We have met. We are all negotiating from a position of strength in Copenhagen. I want to emphasise that we will never compromise on India’s position.”

Five MPs — BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi,CPM’s Sitaram Yechury,Congress’s Hamidullah Sayeed,M S Swaminathan,and BJD’s Bhartruhari Mahtab — will also be part of the delegation. While they are not strictly part of the negotiating team,the MPs will be allowed to interject at the summit. — With Neha Sinha in New Delhi