Meeting Designed To Fund Climate Aid To Poor Countries Postponed Another Six Weeks - AFP

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A first meeting to set down the ground rules of a fund to channel hundreds of billions of dollars to poor countries exposed to climate change has been postponed until the second half of April, a UN official said on Thursday. Representatives from 40 countries had been scheduled to meet in Mexico City on March 14 and 15 for the maiden meeting of a panel designed to breathe life into the Green Climate Fund (GCF) established last December.

A spokesman for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told AFP by phone from Bonn that the meeting had been postponed "until the latter part of April." In Cancun, Mexico, the 194 parties of the UNFCCC agreed to establish the GCF, which would have a board of 24 members chosen evenly from developed and developing nations.

The task of drawing up the fund's terms of reference has been entrusted to a transitional committee of 25 developing and 15 developed countries. Important details are at stake, including the scope of a registry to record financial pledges and climate-mitigating action and whether non-governmental groups, the private sector and international organisations should be allowed to take part.

But the first meeting has been hampered by delays among Asian, Latin American and Caribbean countries over who should have a seat on the committee, the spokesman said. "The others have made up their minds," he said.

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