The Copenhagen Summit was a Farce, says Cuban Foreign Minister
News from Cuba | Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez described on Monday in this capital as a farce and as an undemocratic, exclusive and arbitrary meeting the UN Conference on Climate Change recently held in Copenhagen, Denmark.
In the presence of national and foreign journalists gathered at the Foreign Ministry, Rodriguez offered details on the dirty scheming carried out by the United States and other industrialized nations at the Danish meeting in order not to adopt commitments with regard to climate.
He defined the attitude of US President Barack Obama, during his short stay in Denmark, as arrogant, cynical and absolutely devious, “principally aimed at confusing the international public opinion and participants in the Summit, making them believe that it had reached the final document through general agreement.
He pointed out that later on Obama met in private, and behind the back of the majority of the heads of state of participating nations, 16 countries called to a separate meeting by the US head of state adopted an apocryphal document, of insufficient commitments with the planet’s needs.
Rodriguez accused industrialized nations of having produced a final document with which they tried to distribute responsibilities and monetary commitments with emerging countries and even with the poorest of the globe, including the islands destined to disappear as a consequence of climate change.
The powerful, explained Rodriguez, refuse to make commitments that put them under the obligation of reducing their carbon dioxide emissions by 40% until 2020 and to transfer technologies to poor states and financial aid for programs destined to reduce these emissions, without compromising their development.
The Cuban Foreign Minister praised the speeches by the presidents from Venezuela and Bolivia, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, respectively, in their search for salvation for both the meeting and the planet.
Evo, one of the most applauded heads of state, proposed the carrying out of a Summit of the Peoples against Climate Change, a meeting convened for April 22nd in Bolivia.
Sudan -in its capacity as president of the Group of 77 plus China-, Venezuela,
Bolivia, Cuba and other nations from the South were the ones in charge of forestalling the maneuvers of the presidency of Denmark in its eagerness to impose a declaration in tune with the interests of the rich, he said.
The planet is in danger. The Copenhagen Summit tried to be the tomb of the Kyoto Protocol, and was a step backwards in the efforts to save the planet, stressed Rodriguez.
