Saturday, July 9 2005 14:43 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Criticising the world's wealthiest nations for not reaching a consensus to deal with global warming, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said that, India played a constructive role in proposing concrete steps to tackle climate change.

Singh, who attended the G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland as an invitee on Thursday, told reporters here yesterday (July 08, 2005) that, there were "visible" open differences between US and other members of the grouping on the issue.

The communique at the end of the summit failed to come to grips with the challenges of climate change, he said.

Pointing out that India had "very limited role" at this meeting, "New Delhi has played a constructive role in proposing concrete instrumentalities to ameliorate the adverse impact of climate change, which when implemented would have a measurable impact", he added.

This, he said, would lead to softening the vigorous application of intellectual property rights for clean technologies, a commitment to make available critical technologies to developing countries at concessional rates and the creation of a network of Research and Development (R&D) institutions in developed and developing countries to focus on clean technologies.

The G8 leaders appeared to have bowed to US pressure on climate change by approving a watered-down declaration that avoided taking concrete steps to fight global warming, such as setting targets or timetables for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.