As the negotiations in Copenhagen appeared to have entered a deadlock, the Obama Administration has insisted on "transparency" of any operational agreement on climate change at the ongoing summit meeting in the Denmark Capital.
"One of the issues that the President and the team in Copenhagen are concerned with is the transparency of any operational agreement, ensuring that what makes an agreement operational is able to be verified, so that we know people are living up to those agreements," the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday.
"That's an issue that has yet to be worked out, and it's an issue of great concern to the US," Gibbs said when asked about the near deadlock-like situation in Copenhagen, where leaders from more than 100 countries including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are scheduled to attend.
"I think the President strongly believes that we have to have that in there in order to make sure that an agreement is enforceable and if we're going to make progress, we have to do more than just put a series of goals on a piece of paper," Gibbs said.
We have to also have a mechanism in that paper to ensure that transparency allows us to verify what each nation is doing," he argued, buttressing US point of view.
US President Barack Obama would leave Washington today for Copenhagen to attend the summit on climate change, as he dispatched the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a last ditch American effort to arrive at an agreement on this critical issue to the planet earth.
Gibbs said Obama is still hopeful of an agreement at Copenhagen. "The President is hopeful that his presence can help that, and hopeful that, again, we leave Copenhagen with a strong operational agreement, even as we work towards something even stronger in the future," he said.
The United States, he said has put an aggressive range on the table for a reduction in carbon dioxide from America's economy. "We have, in conjunction with others, set forward some short-term financing goals that we believe internationally can be met to help some developing countries," he said.
"We've worked with India and China to bring them along in enunciating strong targets for reducing the carbon intensity in their economies," Gibbs said.
"Leaders representing developing and developed nations all over the world, coming to Copenhagen, gives an opportunity for some of those issues to be resolved and a breakthrough to happen," he added. When asked about the bottlenecks coming in the way of the success of the climate change summit and the US position on it, Gibbs said: "We have very specific concerns, and I think they're fairly common-sense".
The American people and, quite frankly, anybody in the world could understand, Gibbs said adding "If we are going to enter into an operational agreement, we have to understand and be able to determine whether each of the people involved in that operational agreement is living up to the aspects of that agreement by finding out through transparency whether each of us is keeping up our end of the bargain.
If people are serious about coming to an agreement, then taking up and approving a commonsense measure like transparency is a pretty simple way of moving past what some have said is a big hurdle, he argued.
President Obama has worked hard to get an agreement and certainly hopes that he would leave Copenhagen having made that progress, he said.
"We saw similar actions taken by the Indians as were taken by the Chinese in the lead up to this -- a target, again, that was unclear whether they would enunciate prior to going to Copenhagen, for a reduction in the carbon intensity of their economy, a specific commitment to attend the conference and to try to seek a solution for those issues," he said.
"It's important that the President and his team believe that, without diplomacy and leadership in this, we might not be at this point," he added.
