THE recently-concluded 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, Denmark, was a failure, and it signified a step backwards in the international community’s actions to prevent or mitigate the effects of global warming, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said at a Monday press conference at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

After rejecting the accusations of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Environmental Minister Ed Miliband that a handful of countries (referring to Third World nations) took the conference hostage, Rodríguez Parrilla explained that the conference, which generated so many expectations, made no decisions whatsoever on any binding or nonbinding commitments, either political or related to international law.

Unfortunately, there was no agreement in Copenhagen, he emphasized.

Rodríguez Parrilla affirmed that there was only ambiguous, deceitful wheeling-and-dealing behind the back of the Conference imposed by President Barack Obama on a group of countries, and subsequent attempts to impose these on states party to the convention.

In that context, he said that the cause of the failure lies in the lack of political will on the part of the industrialized countries, which drafted a final document and tried to utilize it to distribute responsibilities and financial commitments to developing nations, even the poorest on the planet, including islands that may disappear as a result of the climate change phenomenon.

The West refused to accept binding commitments to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 40% by the year 2020, or to transfer technology and the accompanying financial aid to poor countries to help them reduce their harmful toxic emissions, the Cuban foreign minister stated.

In exposing the role of the U.S. president at the conference, he said, "at this Summit, there has been only one imperial, arrogant Obama, who does not listen, who imposes positions on and even threatens developing countries."