Yahoo News 12 Aug 10;
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – Mexico is striving to bring countries which felt excluded from the Copenhagen climate talks into the negotiations at this year's UN climate summit in Cancun, its climate ambassador said on Thursday.
"Some developing countries felt excluded" from the Copenhagen negotiations last December, including a number of Asian and Latin American nations, Luis Alfonso de Alba told reporters in Stockholm.
"That explains why we have started since the beginning of the year to address those concerns," he said. "We are paying particular attention to those countries that felt their views were not significantly taken into account."
Cancun will host UN climate talks from November 29 to December 10 that will seek to achieve a binding agreement on carbon dioxide emissions to replace the Kyoto Protocol which expires in December 2012.
"We have a very clear understanding that this is a process that needs to have everybody involved, not only the major (greenhouse gas) emitters," De Alba said.
"That is the way the United Nations works, to build a general level of agreement," added the veteran diplomat, who is a former Mexican ambassador to the United Nations and first president of the UN Human Rights Council.
Copenhagen produced an agreement to limit global temperature rise to two degrees, but it was reached at the last minute by a handful of rich and major developing countries.
Many small countries, frustrated at being left out, refused to sign it.
Da Alba said nations that felt excluded in Copenhagen included Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Pakistan, the Gulf states, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chili, Peru and Colombia.
In the run-up to Cancun, he said, Mexico hopes to enter into a partnership with African countries by organising meetings on the continent.
