Commonwealth summit to tackle climate

LONDON — Climate change will top the debate agenda at this week’s Commonwealth heads of states and government summit at a luxury hotel in Port of Spain.

This year’s summit of the 53- member association of former British colonies and dependencies will be opened today by Queen Elizabeth, who travelled to the Trinidad and Tobago capital from Bermuda, where she took part in celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of British settlement on the island.

A proposed timetable for the possible re-admission of Zimbabwe to the grouping by 2011 will also be discussed, along with a range of human rights issues in other countries.

The importance attached to this year’s emphasis on climate change is underlined by the participation of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

His invitation as a special guest marks a first for the biennial Commonwealth summits.

French officials said Sarkozy would use the event to push the climate change policies he and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed at a meeting in Paris earlier this month.

The Franco-Brazilian agreement calls on rich states to commit themselves to a radical cut in greenhouse emissions by 2050.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he wants to urge Commonwealth states to back an ambitious funding package to combat climate change.

“I will go to the Commonwealth conference to try to build a consensus between rich countries, like Australia and ourselves, and some of the poorest countries in the world about how we can finance climate change,” he said.

He hoped to win backing for his proposal to raise £100bn of funding for climate change by 2020 from contributions from the European Union, the US and some of the richest countries.