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PM takes off for Copenhagen three hours behind schedule due to airport incident | | Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has finally left for Copenhagen on a two-day visit from New Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport for the Heads of States meet on climate change, after a delay of about three hours. Dr.
Singh, along with his team of delegates, took off on a special aircraft named
'Khajuraho' at 5.40 p.m. from here. His flight was scheduled to take off at 2.40
p.m. but it was delayed due to a technical snag and the stand-by aircraft Khajuraho
had to be put onto service. According to reports, the aircraft was hit by a trolley,
which was loading food items into it. Addressing the media at the technical area
from where the aircraft was supposed to take off, Praful Patel said: "The aircraft
was slightly damaged by a loader that required the aircraft to be withdrawn, and
get in a stand-by aircraft immediately." In Copenhagen, Dr. Singh is expected
to push for a balanced and equitable outcome. Dr. Singh is expected to make an
intervention at the plenary of the 15th Conference of Parties on Friday which
would be addressed by Denmark Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and UN
Secretary General Ban ki-Moon. Dr. Singh is accompanied by his Special Envoy on
Climate Change Shyam Saran and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao. World leaders,
including US President Barack Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, will also be at the
plenary where they would try to reach a political agreement to tackle global warming.
The fate of the climate change talks hung in a balance, as differences persisted
between rich and developing nations over taking legally binding carbon emission
cuts. While the industrialised nations want key developing countries like China
and India to agree to emission cuts, the emerging economies are citing historical
responsibility and insisting that the rich nations should take lead, as it was
they who had created the problem. On Wednesday, Nirupama Rao has said that India
would take all measures and steps necessary to prevent the developed nations from
imposing a political commitment on carbon emission cuts on developing countries
that was at variance to what has been agreed under the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Bali Action Plan (BAP). Briefing media
here ahead of Dr. Singh's visit, Rao said: "From our perspective, we need to ensure
that this expression of a fresh political commitment does not become a template
for a new mandate that detracts from the Bali Action Plan and dissolves the fundamental
differentiation in the nature of commitments/actions amongst developed and developing
countries as visualized in the BAP." |
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