Manmohan Singh's flight to Copenhagen delayed (Manmohan Singh-update)

New Delhi, Dec 17 (ANI): Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's special flight to Copenhagen, Denmark, where he is scheduled to attend the Heads of States meeting on climate change has been delayed due a technical snag.

Dr. Singh, along with his team of delegates, is now slated to make the journey on a stand-by aircraft named "Khajuraho" from the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The special aircraft is reportedly scheduled to take off at 5.15 p.m.

Earlier, the special aircraft was to take-off at 2.40 pm, but due to the technical snag stand-by aircraft was put into service.

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 will be 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." By Ashok Dixit (ANI)