UN staff escape injury after attack in southeast Chad

United Nations peacekeepers have helped secure an area of south-eastern Chad where a UN civilian logistics convoy came under attack from unidentified armed men earlier this morning.

We Stand With Cuba!: African Americans Express Solidarity With theRevolution

To: U.S. Citizens

WE STAND WITH CUBA!

DECLARATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ACTIVISTS, INTELLECTUALS AND ARTISTS IN CONTINUED SOLIDARITY WITH THE CUBAN REVOLUTION

http://www.petitiononline.com/withcuba/petition.html

For endorsement and inquiries just e-mail: blackeducator@africamail.com

We, the undersigned, express our continuing solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.

Cuban expatriate Carlos Moore and the other signers of the December 1, 2009 ACTING ON OUR CONSCIENCE: DECLARATION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN SUPPORT FOR THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN CUBA do not speak for or represent the vast majority of Black radicals/progressives, nor the sentiment of the masses of African Americans in the United States. This December 1st Declaration ironically makes no mention of the 50 year US blockade against Cuba, and how it seeks to derail the progress made by Cuba thus far toward eradicating the racism created by its former colonizers - Spain and the United States.

We are disappointed that the signers of the Declaration, many whom have made important contributions to the African American struggles against racism and for democracy, connected their charge of racism to the claims of Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez and Carlos Moore, two known opponents of Cuba’s revolutionary system. Apparently, like many opportunists both Carlos Moore and Dr. Darsi Ferrer Ramirez, who resides in Cuba, saw the opportunity to solicit support for their position from this select group of high profile and “credible” sectors of the African American community. This action is divisive and misguided.

We, the undersigned, believe that the Carlos Moore originated petition is designed to create a wedge in the African American support base for Cuba. Moore’s petition is also an attempt to dismiss Cuba as a modern example of how socialism is a practical system that ensures an equitable distribution of its resources for ALL Cubans.

For more than forty years, Carlos Moore has opportunistically roamed the globe spreading lies and slander about Cuba. Like Moore, Dr. Darsi Ferrer, who ran into trouble when he attempted to set up a medical clinic outside the state run medical system, has also sought to use race to undermine the gains, institutions and anti-racist direction brought about by the Cuban Revolution. In 2006, Dr. Ferrer went to the US interest-section and was given a US-monitored email account (i.e. access to a CIA manipulated portal). Dr. Ferrer’s reactionary blog along with links to reactionary websites such as Capital Hill Cubans, Blog for Cuba and killcastro.com can be found at http://blogacionpordarsiferrer.blogspot.com .

Moore, and the signers of the Declaration, ignore the decades-long struggle waged by the Cuban government against all forms of racism. This includes ignoring/denying Cuba’s internationalist support of African, Caribbean and African American liberation struggles. Moreover, Moore and his followers ignore the historical and present-day fact that Afro Cubans have not been a mere passive force, but have been and are central in the struggles to make and advance the Cuban Revolution.

This attack on Cuba is an attack on a country that stood fast to its democratic, socialist, anti-racist and internationalist principles despite the great pressures from US and world imperialism, which has forced other countries to abandon these positions.

It is clearly no coincidence that this attack on Cuba, comes at a time when so many throughout the US and internationally are being victimized by the policies and crises of capitalism and are seeing responses in Cuba and other countries throughout Latin America that seek to address the needs of the masses of people and not the banks and ruling classes as is being done in the US.

This attack on Cuba is an attack on efforts to forge Black and Brown working class unity as the cornerstone of the democratic and socialist revolutions developing throughout Latin America. It also furthers the US efforts to divide African Americans and Latinos as the major growing challenge to oppressive US domestic and foreign policies.

For five hundred years prior to the Cuban Revolution, racism was the norm in Cuban society. To expect that it would completely disappear even in fifty years is a pipe dream.

Indeed, as Fidel Castro, noted in 2003 in a dialogue in Havana with Cuban and foreign teachers:

“Even in societies like Cuba, that arose from a radical social revolution where the people had reached full and total legal equality and a level of revolutionary education that threw down the subjective component of discrimination, it still exists in another form.”

Fidel, as noted in the December 2, 2009 “Message From Cuba To Afro-American Intellectuals and Artists,” described this as objective discrimination, a phenomenon associated with poverty and a historical monopoly on knowledge.

The criticisms about the presence of racism in Cuba are being addressed within the framework of the Cuban Government and civil society. There is and has been fierce debates and policy changes INSIDE these structures when it comes to eradicating 500 years of racism in Cuba.

Cuba’s policies against any form of discrimination and in favor of equality are grounded in the Cuban Constitution. According to Afro Cubans:

“As never before in the history of our nation, black and mestizo Cubans have found opportunities for social and personal development in transformative processes that have been ongoing for the past half a century. These opportunities are conveyed through policies and programs that made possible the initiation of what Cuban Anthropologist Don Fernando Ortiz, called the non- deferrable integration phase of Cuban society.” (Message from Cuba to African American Intellectuals and Artists, 12/2/09)

The people of Cuba, in electing their representatives to the National Assembly, have chosen a very diverse group, including dozens of Black Cubans prominently working in many key roles. Indeed, the National Assembly of Cuba is so racially diverse that if Cuba was “suffering” from racism, how did these brothers and sisters get elected? Unlike when the Congressional Black Caucus was formed in 1970, this effort came out of the necessity here in the United States to continually defend the hard won Civil liberties and the rights to equal opportunities waged for centuries by African Americans.

Unlike the signers of the December 1, 2009 Declaration, we have not forgotten that in the struggles against colonialism and apartheid, when Africa called, Cuba answered. Unlike other friends of Africa, Cuba provided assistance to the people of Southern Africa, without brokering one deal for access to resources or anything else. Cuba‘s solidarity with the people of Southern Africa in the 1987/88 Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola was the decisive turning point in the defeat of apartheid. We remember and applaud Cuba’s provision of teachers, technicians, doctors and other medical personnel along with free medical training to the young people of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and Asia. During the past forty years, more than 35,000 African youth have been trained free of charge while studying in Cuban medical and technical schools as well as universities.

We the undersigned believe that the true callous disregard for the rights of citizens is taking place here in the United States, with Hurricane Katrina being the most glaring proof. In contrast Cuba was among the first countries to offer human and material aid during this crisis in 2005, aid that was in turn rejected by the U.S. government. The U.S. Government continues to spend billions of dollars on war abroad while neglecting African Americans and the poor who are generally subjected to substandard health care and education, the lack of decent and affordable housing, urban street violence and police brutality, crippling unemployment and jobs that people need to live decently.

Cuba is the ONLY country in the world to provide free medical training to United States students wishing to become doctors; providing full scholarships that include tuition, room, board and ALL incidentals. Many of these students are African Americans whose dreams of becoming doctors in order to serve their communities would never have been realized.

We the undersigned call on African Americans to stand up in support of the Cuban Revolution and call on the U.S. Government to end its blockade on the Cuban people. We also call for African Americans to build a united front in the United States that addresses the ongoing historical callous disregard for the rights of African Americans and all people who are subjected to gross negligence in America.

We call on the signers of Carlos Moore’s Declaration to withdraw their names as an act of solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and recognition of the valiant and consistent efforts by Cuba to eradicate racism.

In closing we reaffirm our respect for the Cuban people’s right to self-determination and sovereignty.

We the undersigned STAND WITH CUBA!

Long Live The Cuban Revolution!

Abayomi Azikiwe, Detroit
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

S. E. Anderson- Brooklyn, NY
Activist/Educator/ Black Left Unity Network*

Kazembe Balagun, New York, NY
Writer/activist/ Outreach Coordinator -Brecht Forum
blackmanwithalibrar y.com

Amina & Amiri Baraka, Newark, NJ
Activists/Writers/ Educators

The Rev. Luis Barrios, PhD, New York, NY
Afro-Boricua- Human Rights Activist, Priest & Professor
Department of Latin American Studies
John Jay College of Criminal Justice- City University of New York

Judy Bourne, JD, US Virgin Islands
Activist Attorney

Jean Damu, San Francisco, CA
Journalist

Lena Delgado de Torres, Binghamton, NY
Doctoral Candidate, Sociology Department
Binghamton University

James Early, Washington, DC
Board Member of TransAfrica, Institute for Policy Studies and US-Cuba Cultural Exchange and Director of Cultural Heritage Policy at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Smithsonian Institution

Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson- North Carolina/New York
Activists/Educators /Malcolm X Commemoration Committee

Franklin Flores, New York, NY
Artist/Activist, Casa De Las Americas NYC

Joan P. Gibbs, Esq.- Brooklyn, NY
National Conference of Black Lawyers

Gerald Horne, JD, PhD- Austin, TX
Activist/Historian/ Author

Basir Mchawi, Bronx, NY
Chair of the International African Arts Festival

Rosemari Mealy, JD, PhD- Brooklyn, NY
Educator/Activist/ Author of Fidel and Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting

Saladin Muhammad- Rocky Mount, NC
Black Workers For Justice

Tony Menelik Van Der Meer- Boston, MA
Activist/Educator • Africana Studies Department
University of Massachusetts Boston

Norman Richmond, Toronto, Canada
Activist/Radio Journalist

Prof. Harold Rogers, Chicago, IL
Chair, Emeritus, African American Studies Dept
City Colleges of Chicago

Aishah D. Sales, Adjunct Professor, Peekskill, NY
Dept. of Mathematics Westchester Community College (SUNY)

William W. Sales, Jr., PhD.- Peekskill, NY
Associate Professor Africana Studies Department Seton Hall University

Brenda Stokely, Brooklyn, NY
Million Worker March Movement, Labor/Community and Anti-war Activists

Tim Thomas, Oakland, CA
Community Building Program Manager
Habitat for Humanity East Bay

Willie Thompson, San Francisco, CA
Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, City College of San Francisco

Askia Toure, Boston, MA
Activist/Poet

Tontongi, Boston, MA
Editor of the Review Tanbou, Boston, Massachusetts

Roy Walker- Chicago, IL
Advocate of Philosophical Consciencism

Michael Tarif Warren, Brooklyn, New York
Activist Attorney

Hank Williams- New York City
Freedom Road Socialist Org/OSCL and CUNY Graduate Center
==============================
For endorsement and inquiries: blackeducator@africamail.com
* Organizational affiliations are for identification purposes only

Yalla Peace Party to Form Chapters in Palestine and Israel

Wind turbines that deliver more power

Green Idea

Wind turbines have a few problems. They shut down when the wind is too strong, and do nothing when it isn’t blowing. Vertical Wind Energy, a Newcastle start-up, says its design suffers from neither shortcoming. Instead of the traditional pinwheel configuration, Vertical’s machine has upright blades that spin like a top around a central, vertical axis, rather than at right angles to the ground. The turbine can be used by homes, businesses and farms. The company recently installed its first demonstration turbine near Shrewsbury.
More information is available at www.vweltd.co.uk

Barack Obama’s climate deal unravels at last moment

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

The United Nations climate change conference ended in recrimination yesterday without reaching a clear deal on emissions targets.
After a stormy session in Copenhagen, in which a vociferous anti-American minority brought the talks close to collapse, most countries agreed simply to “take note” of a watered-down agreement brokered by President Barack Obama and supported by Britain.
This accord — which had been drawn up in discussions with China and 30 or so other countries on Friday — sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2C above pre-industrial times.
Above this temperature, scientists say, the world would start to experience dangerous changes, including floods, droughts and rising seas.

Critics pointed out, however, that the agreement failed to say how this limit on rising temperatures would be achieved. It pushed into the future decisions on core problems such as emissions cuts, and did not specify where a proposed $100 billion (£62 billion) in annual aid for developing nations would come from.
Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat, called it “basically a letter of intent … the ingredients of an architecture that can respond to the long-term challenge of climate change”.
Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International, dismissed it as “a triumph of spin over substance. It recognises the need to keep warming below 2C but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the big decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash”.
The deal was denounced when put early yesterday to a plenary session of the conference after Obama and other heads of state had flown home.
Delegates from Sudan, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia — who form an anti-American front — led the attack.
A Sudanese delegate, Lumumba Di-Aping, caused uproar when he compared the plan with the Holocaust. It was, he said, “a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that piled 6m people into furnaces in Europe”.
“The reference to the Holocaust is … absolutely despicable,” said Anders Turesson, Sweden’s chief negotiator.

Copenhagen: The last-ditch drama that saved the deal from collapse

In the end it came down to frantic horse trading between exhausted politicians. After two weeks of high politics and low cunning that pitted world leaders against each other and threw up extraordinary new alliances between states, agreement was finally reached yesterday on an accord to tackle global warming. But the bitterness and recriminations that bedevilled the talks threaten to spread as environmental activists and scientists react to what many see as a deeply flawed deal

John Vidal and Jonathan Watts
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 20 December 2009 00.05 GMT

The Copenhagen accord was gavelled through in the early hours of yesterday morning after a night of extraordinary drama and two weeks of subterfuge. It is a document that will shape the world, the climate and the balance of power for decades to come, but the story of how it came into existence is one of high drama and low politics.
Amid leaks, suspicion, recriminations and exhaustion, the world’s leaders abandoned ordinary negotiating protocol to haggle line-for-line with mid-level officials. An emergency meeting of 30 leaders was called after a royal banquet on Thursday evening because of the huge number of disputes still remaining.
China and India were desperate to avoid this last-minute attempt to strong-arm them into a deal. The Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh’s plane mysteriously developed a problem that delayed his arrival. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao simply refused to attend, sending his officials instead. In a collapse of protocol, middle-ranking officials from the two countries negotiated line by line on a text with Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Germany’s Angela Merkel and US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Gordon Brown felt the only way to overcome the logjam was for leaders to descend into the detail and take on officials. Yet there was still no agreement by 7am on Friday.
“I thought it was meltdown,” said Ed Miliband, Britain’s secretary of state for energy and climate change. Brown returned to the fray, cranking out 13 amendments designed to overcome the objections of the developing nations and press home Europe’s desire to commit to a 50% reduction in global emissions by 2050 and a determination to make the process legally – not just “politically” – binding on all parties. Both goals were rejected by China and India, which had formed a strong alliance.
During the day, and the flurry of different texts, the leaders battled on, trying to reach an agreement that was not just about saving the Earth from global warming, but would also play an important role in reshaping the global balance of power. Barack Obama, who had flown in on Friday morning on Air Force One, joined the discussions immediately and held two sets of direct talks with Wen, who never once participated in the closed-room group meetings.
Around 8pm, after the second of these bilateral meetings, Obama returned to the negotiating room saying he had secured an agreement from Wen on the key issue of how promises to cut emissions would be verified by the international community. But a new fight then erupted in which China bizarrely insisted that Europe lower its targets for greenhouse gas emissions.
Merkel wanted to set a target for developed nations to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, but in the last gasp, China declared this unacceptable. This astonished many of those present: China was telling rich nations to rein back on their long-term commitment. The assumed reason was that China will have joined their ranks by 2050 and does not want to meet such a target. “Ridiculous,” exclaimed Merkel as she was forced to abandon the target.
But it was not to be the final battle in a bruising conflict that left the negotiators drained and the draft diluted. The final text was released shortly before midnight. The final two-and-a-half-page political agreement – the Copenhagen accord – was vaguely worded, short on detail and not legally binding. Although it was hailed as a step forward by Brown and Obama, the weak content and the final huddled process of decision-making – ignoring the majority of the 192 nations present – provoked disappointment and fury.
Part of the frustration was the lack of new ambition. Due to the leaks, hold-ups and suspicion, China barely budged and the EU refused to raise it sights. Before the Copenhagen conference, the EU said it was willing to raise its emissions reduction target from 20% to 30% by 2020 if other countries also lifted theirs. That never happened. European commission president José Manuel Barroso said not one country asked the EU to move up to the higher figure, but counterparts had pulled down EU proposals to set a target for 2050.
“It was extraordinary,” he said. “This is important for the record. Other parties do not have the interest and awareness in climate change that we have.” Which other party was soon apparent. That night, immediately after the accord was announced and denounced for its weakness, the Observer asked the director general of the Swedish environment protection agency, Lars-Erik Liljelund, who was to blame for blocking a 2050 target for cutting emissions.
“China,” he said after a dramatic pause. “China doesn’t like numbers.”
The drama was not over. Without recognition by the plenary session of all the delegate nations, the agreement was almost worthless. But the anger in the hall meant that approval was far from certain. When the Danish chairman, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, gave delegates just an hour to consider the accord, he was assailed by a storm of criticism.
The Venezuelan representative raised a bloodied hand to grab his attention. “Do I have to bleed to grab your attention,” she fumed. “International agreements cannot be imposed by a small exclusive group. You are endorsing a coup d’état against the United Nations.”
While the debate raged, China’s delegate, Su Wei, was silent as Latin American nations and small island states lined up to attack the accord and the way it had been reached.
“We’re offended by the methodology. This has been done in the dark,” fumed the Bolivian delegate. “It does not respect two years of work.”
Others resorted to histrionics. The document “is a solution based on the same very values, in our opinion, that channelled six million people in Europe into furnaces,” said Sudan’s Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping.
It was too much for Rasmussen, who looked strained and exhausted after a week spent vainly trying to bridge the schisms between the parties. He raised his gavel to close the debate, which would have aborted the Copenhagen accord and condemned the summit to abject failure.
The document was saved at the last second by Miliband, who had rushed back from his hotel room to call for an adjournment. During the recess, a group led by Britain, the US and Australia forced Rasmussen out of the chair and negotiated a last-minute compromise. The accord was neither accepted or rejected, it was merely “noted”. This gave it a semblance of recognition, but the weak language reflected the unease that has surrounded its inception. Copenhagen was the leakiest international conference in history. The first leak, on the second day of the conference, came after a mysterious telephone invitation to meet a diplomat in a cubbyhole at the back of one of the delegation offices.
Two sheets of paper were handed over. They were the detailed analysis of the “Danish text”, a widely rumoured but never seen document prepared by a few rich countries in secret and almost certainly intended to be sprung on unsuspecting developing countries when there was an impasse at a late stage in the negotiations.
But without the actual text, the document was incomplete and hard to use. The leaker said that other papers would be handed over to the Guardian off the premises the next day, but the call never came. The day was only saved by an another leaker from another country who handed over a copy of the Danish text within 24 hours. The two leaks together exploded into the negotiations, with developing countries convinced of a conspiracy and rich countries furious as their plans were revealed. If adopted, the text would have killed off the Kyoto treaty, which puts legal demands on rich nations, but not developing ones.
As the conference went on, the leaks became more regular, until by the end there was a flood. Three days before the end, a confidential scientific analysis paper emerged from the heart of the UN secretariat, showing that the emission-cut pledges countries had made by that point would lead not to a 2C rise, as countries were aiming for, but a 3C rise that would frazzle half the world. Britain and other rich countries claimed that the figures were wrong, despite other analyses agreeing with them. But developing countries accused the UN of knowingly consigning countries to destruction.
In the last 24 hours, it became negotiation by leak. Secret documents were deliberately left on photocopiers, others were thrust into journalists’ hands or put on the web. People were photographing them and handing them around all the time. All eight versions of the final text that world leaders were asked to sign up to were leaked within minutes of being published. The talks repeatedly teetered on the brink of collapse.
As the talks were snared on procedural issues inside the conference hall, civil society was getting angry. As the arrival of the 120 world leaders approached, more and more restrictions were imposed on who was allowed in. The 7,000 colourful and noisy kids, environmentalists, church groups, lobbyists, students, activists and others who had been allowed into the Bella centre every day were first reduced to 1,000 and then to just 90 on the last day.
Mainstream groups such as Friends of the Earth International and Greenpeace were cut down from hundreds of activists to only a few each. Asian and African groups were hit the hardest because entry was in proportion to membership size.
Posters went up – “How can you decide for us without us?” and “Civil society silenced” – and there were demonstrations, but by the end the Bella centre was silenced.
Before the start of the conference, it had been assumed the leaders would only have to settle two or three issues when they arrived at Copenhagen, but by the time they walked in there were still 192 disputed pieces of text in the drafts.
Rather than reopen debate following the frantic final 24 hours of horse trading, the new chair gavelled through the decision in a fraction of a second. Sudan, China and India expressed concerns, but the Copenhagen accord had been born. Though frail and unloved, this document will shape the lives of generations. Though many environmentalists claimed no deal was better than such a weak deal, those most closely involved in the negotiations said it marked progress of a sort.
“It was definitely worth saving,” said Miliband. “This is the first time that developed and developing nations have agreed to deal with emissions and the first time the world has agreed on a deal on climate finance.”
Money is likely to oil the deal. Only nations that accept the UN document will be entitled to some of the $30bn dollar start-up fund that will be made available over the next three years to tackle deforestation, share technology and deal with the impact of climate change.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said the negotiations that ultimately involved 113 leaders were unprecedented in UN history, but the effort had been worth while.
“Finally we have sealed the deal. Bringing world leaders to the table paid off,” said Ban, who had slept only two hours in the previous two days. “It’s not what everyone hoped for, but this is a beginning.”
The sentiments were echoed by John Hay, spokesman for the United Nations framework convention on climate change: “At the UNFPCCC, there has been quite a bit of drama over the years. But this may top the list.”
Outside the conference hall yesterday, more than 100 protesters chanted: “You’re destroying our future!” Some carried signs of Obama with the words “climate shame” pasted on his face.
Friends of the Earth said the “secret backroom declaration” failed to take into account the needs of more than a hundred countries”. “This toothless declaration, being spun by the US as a historic success, reflects contempt for the multilateral process and we expect more from our Nobel prize-winning president,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Kate Horner.
Negotiators put on a brave face. In the early hours, as he headed out into the bitterly cold, Brian Cowen, the Irish taoiseach, expressed disappointment at the outcome.
“The substance of the European Union’s [offers] was robustly put, but we couldn’t get the commitment of others,” Cowen said. “We did not achieve everything we wanted, but the reality is that this is as much as can be advanced at this stage.”
China seemed more satisfied. “The meeting has had a positive result, everyone should be happy,” said Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation.

China blamed as anger mounts over climate deal

• Beijing accused over emissions cuts• Campaigners say accord ‘a disaster’

Jonathan Watts and John Vidal in Copenhagen Robin McKie and Toby Helm
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009
An outbreak of bitter recrimination has erupted among politicians and delegates following the drawing up of the Copenhagen accord for tackling climate change.
The deal, finally hammered out early yesterday, had been expected to commit countries to deep cuts in carbon emissions. In the end, it fell short of this goal after China fought hard against strong US pressure to submit to a regime of international monitoring.
The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, walked out of the conference at one point, and sent a lowly protocol officer to negotiate with Barack Obama. In the end, a draft agreement put forward by China – and backed by Brazil, India and African nations – commits the world to the broad ambition of preventing global temperatures from rising above 2C. Crucially, however, it does not force any nation to make specific cuts.
“For the Chinese, this was our sovereignty and our national interest,” said Xie Zhenhua, head of China’s delegation.
Last night, some delegates were openly critical of China for its intransigence. Asked by the Observer who was to blame for blocking the introduction of controlled emissions, the director general of the Swedish environment protection agency, Lars-Erik Liljelund, replied: “China. China doesn’t like numbers.” At the same time, others have criticised the Americans for pushing China too hard.
“President Obama’s speech blaming China didn’t help,” says John Prescott, writing in today’s Observer.
The accord was formally recognised after a dramatic all-night plenary session, during which the Danish chairman was forced to step aside, a Venezuelan delegate cut her hand, and Britain’s climate and energy secretary, Ed Miliband, salvaged the deal just as it appeared on the verge of being rejected.
The tumultuous events concluded a fortnight of fraught and sometimes machiavellian negotiations that saw a resurgent China link forces with India, Brazil and African states to thwart efforts by rich nations to steamroller through a binding treaty that would suit their interests.
Although hailed by Obama, the deal has been condemned by activists and NGOs, while the European commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, admitted he was disappointed after EU attempts to introduce long-term targets for reducing global emissions by 50% by 2050 were blocked.
Last night Miliband was being credited with helping to rescue the summit from disaster. He had been preparing to go to bed at 4am, after the main accord had been agreed, only to be called by officials and warned that several countries were threatening to veto its signature.
Miliband returned to the conference centre in time to hear Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping comparing the proposed agreement to the Holocaust. He said the deal “asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”. A furious Miliband intervened and dismissed Di-Aping’s claims as “disgusting”.
This was “a moment of profound crisis”, Miliband told delegates. The proposed deal was by no means perfect, and would have many problems, he admitted. “But it is a document that in substantive ways will make the lives of people around this planet better because it puts into effect fast-start finance of $30bn; it puts into effect a plan for $100bn of long-term public and private finance.” The deal was then agreed by delegates.
The accord makes reference to the need to keep temperature rises to no more than 2C, and says rich countries will commit to cutting greenhouse gases, and developing nations will take steps to limit the growth of their emissions. Countries will be able to set out their pledges for action in an appendix. In addition, there are provisions for short-term finance of up to $10bn a year over three years to help poorer countries fight climate change, and a long-term funding package worth $100bn a year by 2020.
However, the original plan was for the Copenhagen talks to deliver a comprehensive, legally binding international deal to tackle climate change. This has not materialised and last night leaders of NGOs united in condemning the limited nature of the deal.
“This accord is not legally binding, it’s a political statement,” said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. “This is a disaster for the poor nations – the urgency of climate change was not really considered.”
Dame Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, agreed. “World leaders in Copenhagen seem to have forgotten that they were not negotiating numbers, they were negotiating lives,” she said.

US Threatens Iran Over Disputed Oil Fields on Border With Occupied Iraq

Sunday, December 20, 2009
01:55 Mecca time, 22:55 GMT

Iraq sends forces to disputed field

Ownership of the al-Fauqa oil fields has been disputed since the wells were built in 1974

Iraq has deployed security forces to its southern border with Iran to monitor a disputed oil well seized by Iranian troops.

Iraqi authorities sent army and police forces to a staging ground about 1km from the well in the Fauqa oil field in southern Maysan province on Saturday, The Associated Press news agency reported, citing officials.

Baghdad says Iranian troops crossed the border into Iraqi territory a day earlier, taking control of well Number 4 and raising an Iranian flag.

The Iraqi government demanded that “Tehran pull back the armed men who occupied well Number 4″, and condemned the incident as “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty”.

But Iran has denied that it had violated Iraq’s sovereignty.

Iran’s Armed Forces Command issued a statement on Saturday making clear that, in Tehran’s view, there had been no incursion into Iraq as the oil well is within Iranian borders.

“Our forces are on our own soil and, based on the known international borders, this well belongs to Iran,” the statement said.

Well 4 is in the al-Fauqa Field, part of a cluster of oilfields which Iraq unsuccessfully put up for auction to oil majors in June. The field has estimated reserves of 1.55 million barrels.

Incursion denied

Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, accused “external sources in Iraq” of working to damage relations between the governments in Tehran and Baghdad, the official IRNA news agency reported.

And a senior Iranian MP also tried to play down the dispute.

“The claim that Iran has occupied an Iraqi oil well is strongly rejected,” Alaeddin Borujerdi, head of parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, told IRNA.

The issue was “being examined through diplomatic channels,” he said, blaming “foreign media for such propaganda.”

But Muhammad al-Hajj Hamud, Iraq’s deputy foreign minister, rejected Iranian claims on the well and called for an Iranian unit made up of around a dozen soldiers and technicians to be withdrawn.

“We summoned Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad [on Friday] to tell him that this attack is unacceptable and our ambassador to Tehran delivered a note to their foreign ministry to ask them to pull out their troops,” he said.

Hamud said it was the first time Well 4 had been taken over.

“In the past, the Iranians would try to prevent our technicians from working on the well … by firing in their direction,” he said, adding Iraq had dug the well in 1974.

‘Sovereignty issue’

The Iraqi official said the incident comes a month before a joint commission starts work on demarcating the two countries’ land and sea border along the Shatt al-Arab waterway in the south.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters in Baghdad that as far as Washington was concerned “it’s a sovereignty issue”, adding that there were five other fields under dispute.

And in southern Iraq, a US military spokesman told AFP that the incident at Well 4 was the latest in a series of such activity along the frontier.

“The oilfield is in disputed territory between Iranian and Iraqi border forts,” said the officer at Contingency Operating Base Adder, just outside the city of Nasiriyah.

The well lies about 500 metres from an Iranian border fort and about one kilometre from an Iraqi border fort, US Colonel Peter Newell said.

Source: Agencies

US alarm at Iran’s Iraq incursion

America’s top military officer has voiced concern about an incursion by Iran into Iraq that ended with Iranian soldiers seizing an Iraqi oil well.

Admiral Mike Mullen said he had spoken to Iraq’s defence minister, but it was for leaders in Tehran and Baghdad to resolve the dispute.

Officials from both countries have said they want a diplomatic solution.

The Iranian troops are now believed to have now left the Fakkah oil field, which is close to the Iranian border.

Similar incidents have happened before along the border, which has never been properly defined since the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s - although relations between the two neighbours are now cordial.

‘No military escalation’

The Iraqis said about a dozen Iranian soldiers had been involved in the incursion and that they had raised the Iranian flag over the oil field.

According to General Ray Odierno, commander of US forces in Iraq, the Iranian forces had left the oil well as of Saturday morning, reports AP news agency.

“All of us are concerned about the influence of Iran,” Adm Mullen told a news conference in Baghdad.

“I worry a great deal about Iran’s view of destabilising this region as well and specifically… focusing on an oil field.”

He continued: “But my understanding is this is sovereign Iraqi territory and is something for leaders in Iraq to resolve.”

Earlier, Iran’s armed forces apparently confirmed the incursion, in a statement quoted by Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam satellite television.

“Our forces are on our own soil and, based on the known international borders, this well belongs to Iran,” they said.

Oil prices rose on Friday amid reports about the commandeered well in Maysan province.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters news agency: “We call for calm and for a peaceful solution to this matter, far from any military escalation.”

US forces are due to stay in Iraq until elections in March 2010, and then gradually pull out, with complete withdrawal scheduled by the end of 2011.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8422997.stm
Published: 2009/12/20 01:22:33 GMT

Teheran, Baghdad in oil well wrangle

AFP–NASIRIYAH– Iranian soldiers took control of an Iraqi oil well on a disputed section of the border on Friday, triggering the ire of Baghdad which demanded their immediate withdrawal.

“Iraq demands that Teheran pulls back the armed men who occupied well No. 4 . . . because what happened today is a violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told AFP.

An official of the state-owned South Oil Company in the south-eastern city of Amara, west of the field, said earlier that “an Iranian force arrived at the field early Friday.

“It took control of well 4 and raised the Iranian flag even though the well lies inside Iraqi territory,” the official added.

Dabbagh said 11 Iranian soldiers were involved and added that the Baghdad government was demanding “that the men remove the flag”, adding that the well had been drilled by Iraq in 1979.

“The Iraqi government rejects the use of force and has launched contacts with Iran in order to resolve this in a diplomatic way,” Dabbagh said. “We now await Iran’s reply.”

Teheran’s semi-official Mehr news agency, meanwhile, reported that the National Iranian Oil Company denied that border guards had seized a well in Iraq’s Fauqa oilfield. It did not elaborate.

Dabbagh was speaking after an emergency meeting of the Iraqi national security council, a ministerial body chaired by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Dabbagh said the incident occurred in a border area where markers to delineate the frontier disappeared during the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war.

“Iraq rejects oil activity in this sector because the border is not really marked. That is why we call on the Iranian authorities to resolve border disputes and replace border markers,” he said.
Earlier, a US military spokesman told AFP the incident was non-violent but the latest in a series of such activity along the frontier.

“The oilfield is in disputed territory in between Iranian and Iraqi border forts,” said the officer at Contingency Operating Base Adder, just outside the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriyah.

Well 4 is in the Fauqa Field, part of a cluster of oilfields Iraq unsuccessfully put up for auction to oil majors in June. The field has estimated reserves of 1,55 million barrels.
It lies about 500 metres from an Iranian border fort and about one kilometre from an Iraqi border fort, US colonel Peter Newell said.

But it falls on the Iraqi side of a border agreed between the two countries, he said, adding that there are five other fields in disputed territory.

“What happens is, periodically, about every three or four months, the oil ministry guys from Iraq will go . . . to fix something or do some maintenance. They’ll paint it in Iraqi colours and throw an Iraqi flag up,” Newell said.

“They’ll hang out there for a while, until they get tired, and as soon as they go away, the Iranians come down the hill and paint it in Iranian colours and raise an Iranian flag. It happened about three months ago and it will probably happen again.”

Obama told China: I can’t stop Israel strike on Iran indefinitely

By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondents

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned his Chinese counterpart that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer, senior officials in Jerusalem told Haaretz.

They said Obama warned President Hu Jintao during the American’s visit to Beijing a month ago as part of the U.S. attempt to convince the Chinese to support strict sanctions on Tehran if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program.

The Israeli officials, who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the United States had informed Israel on Obama’s meetings in Beijing on Iran. They said Obama made it clear to Hu that at some point the United States would no longer be able to prevent Israel from acting as it saw fit in response to the perceived Iranian threat.

After the Beijing summit, the U.S. administration thought the Chinese had understood the message; Beijing agreed to join the condemnation of Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency only a week after Obama’s visit. But in the past two weeks the Chinese have maintained their hard stance regarding the West’s wishes to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The Israeli officials say the Americans now understand that the Chinese agreed to join the condemnation announcement only because Obama made a personal request to Hu, not as part of a policy change.

The Chinese have even refused a Saudi-American initiative designed to end Chinese dependence on Iranian oil, which would allow China to agree to the sanctions, said the Israeli officials.

Saudi Arabia, which is also very worried about the Iranian nuclear program and keen to advance international steps against Iran, offered to supply the Chinese the same quantity of oil the Iranians now provide, and at much cheaper prices. But China rejected the deal.

Since Obama’s visit, the Chinese have refused to join any measures to impose sanctions. The Israeli officials say the Chinese have been giving unclear answers and have not been responding to the claims by Western nations. Beijing has been making do with statements such as “the time has not yet arrived for sanctions.”

China’s actions are particularly problematic because China will take over the presidency of the UN Security Council in January. Western diplomats say China would have no choice but to join in sanctions if Russia agrees to support them, but China could delay discussions and postpone any decision until February, when France becomes council president.

The Israeli officials say Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is showing a greater willingness for sanctions on Iran, despite hesitations by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Gasbag US and China leave us in a world of trouble

Charles Clover

Jeez, what a way to run a planet. Anyone who was at Copenhagen has got to wonder whether this chaotic meeting of 130 world leaders and 40,000 hangers-on really was the way to solve the problems of atmospheric pollution, or any other global problem come to that, and whether the ghastly fudge of a so-called agreement that occurred on Friday night when the ambition slipped out of the talks could have been avoided.
Let us not forget, Copenhagen was the result of two years’ negotiations originally meant to replace the Kyoto protocol with a new legally binding treaty that would keep the world from warming by more than 2C. Then, suddenly, by sleight of diplomatic hand a few months back, it became a meeting to agree the terms of a treaty that would be signed six months on, after the United States Senate had obligingly ratified the pledges made by President Barack Obama last week.
The trouble is, once they got to Copenhagen, nobody seems to have remembered the script, and what has emerged is a turkey, just in time for Christmas.
As President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil put it, this was more like a trade union negotiation than a meeting to save the world from imminent disaster. The momentum that should have come into the talks with the arrival of Obama was lost because of his lacklustre speech, which was critical of China and obviously designed not to provoke the Senate. It all got sticky again. And now there will be recriminations stretching into the new year.
So who is to blame for the desperate lack of ambition of the agreement in Copenhagen, when there appeared at one time to be many useful offers on the table? The obvious target will be the United Nations organisers or the Danish presidency of the conference. Many non-governmental organisations were accredited to the conference and then told to go away again, for instance. The Danish prime minister, Lars Lokke Rasmussen, didn’t help by taking over the conference presidency halfway from Connie Hedegaard, whom delegates had begun to trust. UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon failed to whip up the enthusiasm he did at Bali when he exhorted delegates to put aside their national interests for the planet’s sake.
Much as it is fun to belabour the UN, it wasn’t its fault this time. World leaders were ultimately unable to put their national interests aside and the common good got lost: that’s the simple truth. The conference had come tantalisingly close to a proper deal, they failed to seal it.
The leadership of the early 21st century hasn’t yet recognised that the ways of the 20th century won’t work for the new kinds of problems faced by mankind. There are many more major players today, the world’s population will be pushing towards 9 billion by the middle of the century, and China is the world’s biggest polluter. In this multilateral world there are massive shared problems — food security, ocean acidification and overfishing as well as climate change — which require intense co-operation. It’s a new world and you can’t fix the deals the way the big players used to.
What were the Americans, normally the shrewdest negotiators, playing at? Obama made a speech that had no magic to persuade other parties of America’s good faith. It lacked a rousing exhortation to the Senate to endorse even the significant 17% cuts in emissions the US is offering by 2020 with much deeper cuts to come after that.
The Americans criticised the Chinese for not allowing their emissions to be internationally verified — without offering anything in return. Yet the Chinese pursued their national interest with a ruthlessness that was truly chilling. And then Washington forgot to placate a developing world which can’t forget that the US — the second-biggest polluter in the world — actually signed a treaty to freeze its emissions as long ago as 1992. If you are late to the party then you need to bring a big present.
To succeed in these talks, Obama probably needed to have his battle with the Senate before he came to Copenhagen. He failed to do so, because healthcare was his priority. Now the US has gone out of its way to issue a joint statement with four other countries on a separate track, rather than with the 193 attending. The president may have been right to walk away from what the Chinese were offering, but all the same, a lot of this could have been foreseen. To their credit, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband tried hard to get a deal, but the biggest players weren’t having any. Diplomatic disasters don’t come much bigger than this.
Obama must hate Copenhagen. The last time he came here he lost Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. This time, with so poor a negotiating hand, he shouldn’t have come.
Not all of this is — as they say — the end of the world. But no one should be under any illusion that Copenhagen puts the world on course to avert potentially dangerous climate change by cutting carbon emissions. That failure may already have doomed the coral reefs and triggered vast problems for the world’s poor. The window for an agreement that does keep the rise in global average temperatures below 2C will close in a year or so. All the work will have to be done again. Soon. All because a handful of world leaders forgot which century they were in.

Copenhagen: The key players and how they rated

The agreement brokered by Barack Obama has faced international criticism from all sides, but most participants are already back home trying to portray it as a national political victory

Suzanne Goldenberg in Copenhagen, Toby Helm and John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009
Barack Obama
The last time Barack Obama took a chance on Copenhagen it ended in abject humiliation.
The president hopped on a flight to the Danish capital to join a campaign by Oprah Winfrey and his wife, Michelle, to try to win Chicago the right to host the 2016 Olympic Games. But the Obamas’ reliance on their high-voltage star power fell flat.
The International Olympic Committee eliminated Chicago in the first round of voting. When Obama returned to Washington, Republicans accused him of diminishing the office of president, and using up too much American political capital on such a frivolous matter.
On this return visit, the president did rather better. He flew home into a winter snowstorm in Washington able to claim that – after two years of negotiations had ended in deadlock – he had persuaded the world’s biggest producers of greenhouse gases to act on global warming.
Environmentalists denounced the deal as a sham; and even Obama described its achievements as “modest”. As he told a press conference on Friday night, holding out for a better deal might have meant no deal: “There might be such frustration and cynicism that, rather than taking one step forward, we ended up taking two steps back.”
The White House will be able to spin Obama’s efforts into a portrait of muscular diplomacy. His speech to the summit, in which he sourly noted the distance that remained to a deal, showed the president was prepared to come down hard against political opponents – a capability that has not been in full view in Washington.
That could help blunt Republican claims that the president – once again – gambled and lost at Copenhagen, and weakened America on the international stage. For Democrats, the weakness of the Copenhagen deal may be something of a relief. Obama did not commit America to any new action, giving them additional wriggle room to frame climate legislation with a strong chance of being passed in the Senate.
The deal that emerged in Copenhagen allows Obama to claim that he got China to meet America’s demand that it provide accountability of its actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The issue had been one of the biggest sticking points in negotiations, and getting some elements of a compromise from China was crucial to Obama’s efforts to get the legislation through the Senate.
Republican and Democratic senators from Midwest manufacturing states have been adamant that any deal should not give a competitive advantage to Chinese and Indian industry.
As they returned home on Air Force One, White House officials gave a detailed briefing on how Obama worked his way around a Chinese protocol officer who he thought was getting in the way of his meeting with Wen Jiabao. They also suggested the president had walked uninvited into a meeting of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. The White House had previously thought the meeting would be a one-on-one between Wen and Obama.
“The only surprise we had, in all honesty, was… that in that room wasn’t just the Chinese having a meeting… but in fact all four countries that we had been trying to arrange meetings with,” the White House official said. “The president’s viewpoint is: I wanted to see them all, and now is our chance.”
Obama’s deal does not, of course, come close to what science says must be done on global warming, and falls far short of the UN’s ambitions. It was widely condemned by African and even European officials as soon as Obama left the conference centre – and predictably by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. “We will reject any document Obama tries to slide over the top,” he said.
But the huge shortfalls, and the grumblings of African countries, are not going to matter as much in Washington as the fact that Obama can claim that he went face to face with China – and won.
Suzanne Goldenberg
Gordon BrownMiliband’s late-night dash helped avert a conference crisis
An exhausted Ed Miliband was in his pyjamas and about to get into bed at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Copenhagen when he made a final check call to an official at 4am. The climate change secretary could not believe what he heard.
After two weeks of summitry and years of preparation, an accord had finally been agreed by 30 countries, including the UK and US. Now it just had to be ratified by the full 192 nations present to gain formal UN status. It looked like a formality — far from perfect, but it was something for leaders across the globe to take home.
However, the official told Miliband that five countries – Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Sudan and Saudi Arabia – were cutting up rough and saying they would veto a deal. The whole summit could end in complete failure.
Miliband tore back to the conference centre and entered the meeting to hear the Sudanese official Lumumba Stanislas Dia-ping comparing the agreement to the Holocaust. The pact, he said, was “a solution based on values, the very same values in our opinion that funnelled six million people in Europe into furnaces”. It “asked Africa to sign a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”.
Delegates from a number of western countries quickly took to the floor to denounce the Sudanese delegate’s references as offensive, among them Miliband, who is Jewish. It was a “disgusting comparison” which he said “should offend people across this conference whatever background they come from”.
Officials in Copenhagen said Miliband, as much as anyone, helped to rescue the meeting from potential disaster by his intervention. Certainly, few governments had been as intensely and closely involved in the Copenhagen negotiations for the past few months as the British one, with Gordon Brown and Miliband taking the lead.
For Brown, who is desperate to portray himself as a global statesman, a father figure of world politics following his success in leading the global rescue of the banking system last year, Copenhagen was a perfect chance. He had been the first to propose the idea of a global fund to help developing countries obtain new clean energy technology and protect their peoples from the worst ravages of climate change. Brown devised the idea that industrialised countries set up a $100bn climate fund for developing countries, a plan now enshrined in the Copenhagen deal.
The UK government also championed turning Copenhagen into a fully-fledged summit of prime ministers and presidents, which Barack Obama would have little option but to attend.
Miliband had turned up the rhetoric in the week’s before Copenhagen, warning in an interview with the Observer a fortnight ago that the consequence of failure would be “scary” in terms of the effect on the environment. There would be more floods like those in Cumbria, rising sea levels, and disastrous economic consequences as the world tried to contain the problems in future. He said “children will hold us in contempt” if we failed. So if he and the prime minister had to return to the UK empty-handed, the failure would have been hugely politically damaging.
Last night after returning, Miliband maintained that although he would have preferred a legally binding accord, there was much in the agreement that represented significant progress. “There is a danger of too much negativity,” he said. “There are important things in this agreement, including on carbon emissions, which is on course towards two degrees, and on the finance. We recognise there could have been more ambition in parts of this agreement. Therefore we have to drive forward as hard as we can towards both a legally binding treaty and that ambition.”
Unfortunately for Brown he did not receive a name check from Obama in his roll call of those to be thanked for their efforts to reach a deal. But the upside was that, thanks in part to his climate change secretary, there were at least some fruits of their late night labours to talk about on return.
Toby Helm
ChinaPromise that can’t be proved
Barack Obama was not the only world leader prepared to play hardball at the conference, as China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, also demonstrated that he could withstand pressure from the international community.
Although China, in signing the deal, commits for the first time to curbing the rate of growth of its emissions, Wen can claim that he safeguarded the country’s economic future.
China fought hard against strong pressure from America to submit to an international regime that would monitor if it was indeed cutting emissions as promised.
When Obama said China’s stand on accountability would consign any deal to “empty words on a page”, Wen walked out of the conference centre and went back to his hotel.
He later delivered an additional snub by sending a protocol officer to talk to Obama.
Suzanne Goldenberg
The EUNightmare avoided – but not embarrassment
Europe came to Copenhagen as the bloc that potentially stood to lose the most. The fear was that the US and other countries would refuse to cut their emissions further, but the EU would be forced by public pressure, or by the US , to cut from 20% to 30%, as it had promised to do if there was an ambitious deal.
This would leave it carrying most of the cuts and economically compromised.
The EU need not have worried. No country forced its hand on emission cuts in the negotiations, and it was itself comprehensively split, with countries such as Poland and even Germany reportedly blocking moves by Britain and others to put the cuts on the table.
One European country that played a key role was Denmark, the host, but this turned out to be an embarrassment.
Connie Hedegaard, the Danish climate minister, started well but was forced at the start of week two to step down in favour of the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, officially because it would be inappropriate for a mere climate minister to meet and greet world leaders. But it was an open secret that she was at odds with her leader and the rich countries preferred their own man.
Then Lars Løkke Rasmussen proved to be out of his depth at this level of politics. He, too, was forced to step down, probably by the UK, Australia, Canada and others.
Denmark also gave the world the “Danish text”, a semi-secret set of proposals prepared with the rich countries. to be pushed for at the end of the talks. It was leaked to the Guardian on day two, and from then on the fight between rich and poor countries was furious.
John Vidal
AfricaBold nations wield their new power
The talks saw Africa assert itself on the world stage. The poorest and climatically most vulnerable continent has the most to lose from temperature increases and formed its own negotiating group for the first time.
Led by President Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, it stunned France, Britain and other rich nations last month by unexpectedly walking out of a preparatory UN climate conference meeting in Barcelona. The carefully planned move forced the UN into giving Africa and the concerns of the poorest more negotiating time.
Africa came to Copenhagen emboldened and, with the backing of international environment and development groups, staked out the moral high ground. By demanding the deepest emission cuts from the rich, and stoutly defending the Kyoto protocol – the only legal agreement that forces such countries to cut emissions – it was for once at the dead centre of global politics.
But Africa also has added clout in climate politics because of its close and growing links with China, the world’s biggest producer of emissions. China has invested more than any other country in Africa’s metals, oil and forests, and it now has more allies there than in most other continents.
Just as the US used Britain and its friends to make its arguments at Copenhagen, so China used Africa. But it worked both ways: in an astonishingly bold move, it seems that Africa at one point threatened to withhold its resources from China if it joined other countries in trying to abandon the Kyoto protocol.
But the continent also threw up one of the most interesting new figures on the world stage. Lumumba Di-aping, the Sudanese ambassador to New York, is a McKinsey and Oxford-trained radical economist who not only matched the media spin of western countries, but was partly behind George Soros’s plan to use hundreds of billions of dollars of IMF special drawing rights to fund the financial deal.
In the end, the west exerted its traditional influence in Africa. President Meles was courted strongly by presidents Sarkozy, Brown and Obama in the days before the world leaders met, to try to bring Africa aboard the west’s deal.
Meles proposed that developing countries accept $100bn a year – a remarkably similar sum to what the west had suggested. The accusations soon flew that Ethiopia had been bought and Meles was immediately slapped down by his peers.
Africa ended the talks divided, but knowing that it now plays a far more important role in the new politics of climate change.
John Vidal