With the climate change conference in Paris entering its fifth day, the US today said it has a strong history of working “collaboratively” with India and both nations are working in a “constructive” way to work out a deal which is comfortable for both.US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern also described the meeting of President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Paris on the inaugural day of the conference as “striking” in which the leaders had an “extraordinarily rich” exchange.
“India and US have a very strong history of working collaboratively. That is going on right now. Most striking meeting was when President Obama met Prime Minister Modi. I was in the meeting. It was an extraordinarily rich exchange and very substantive.”The two leaders have a great rapport which is good to see. The president is very substantively tuned into the issues. Prime Minister Modi was ready to do the same. It was a good conversation,” he said.
He said that he had four to five meetings with Indian counterparts in the last one week and both nations are working “quite intensively in a business and constructive way”.”I understand where they are coming from and they (India) understand where we are coming from. The art that goes on here is to try to find solutions that are both effective and both sides can go home and be comfortable. We are in that process,” he said.
The comments come in the backdrop of Secretary of State John Kerry’s remark that India is a “challenge” in the Paris talks.India has also been targeted by the western media on its expansion plans of coal usage to meet its energy requirements.Stern in his earlier interaction had said that the ambitious renewables programme including scaling up solar and wind energy pledged by Prime Minister Modi is “enormously impressive” and US will work with Indian partners and provide assistance in realising their goals.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made pledges which are enormously impressive with respect to the development of renewable energy, solar wind and renewables beyond that. The total that he has pledged is 175 GW by 2022 which is an enormous pledge.”We provide assistance to India, we invest in India. Many other countries do. We certainly want to work with Indian partners to encourage in exactly what they are trying to do and do our best to help them realise that,” Stern had said.
Source: PTI
