The meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government, which got underway today following a colourful inaugural ceremony, will focus on the contentious issue of global warming and set the tone for next month’s talks on climate change at Copenhagen.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, the titular head of the Commonwealth, opened the Trinidad summit. Since the meeting of 53-member Commonwealth, which accounts for a third of the world population, is the last big international gathering before the Copenhagen talks. The deliberations of the three-day summit here will send a strong political message on an issue which has acquired world-wide urgency and pitted the developed and developing against each other.

As the Commonwealth membership includes a large number of small and poor nations, this meeting will provide them an opportunity to express their concerns on climate change before the Copenhagen negotiations get underway. Other burning issues like the recent economic meltdown and human rights will also be taken up by them. Although a Commonwealth summit is attended by leaders of Britain’s former colonies, the presence of outside leaders like UN chief Ban Ki-moon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen is being looked upon as an attempt to influence the upcoming Copenhagen talks. Sarkozy is expected to use this occasion to push the climate-change policies he and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed at a meeting in Paris earlier this month.

According to the Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Patrick Manning, these leaders have been invited because there was some concern about the way negotiations were going ahead of Copenhagen next month. The talks have been deadlocked as developing countries do not want to submit themselves to any legally binding carbon emission cuts on the plea that this will impede their economic growth.

Instead, they want developed countries to fulfill their part of the obligation to provide

adequate resources and technology to poor countries to meet the challenge of climate change.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who arrived here on Thursday along with the official delegation, will speak on behalf of the the small and poor countries during the international meeting as well during bilateral discussions with French President Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Stating that climate change is a major focus of this summit, Shyam Saran, PM’s special envoy on climate change, said India did not agree with the suggestion emanating from a few developed countries that the Copenhagen meeting should come out with a political document and not a legally binding outcome in view of the persisting differences.

He said India would continue to press for a legally binding outcome based on the UN Framework on Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) and the Bali action plan. In case, negotiations have to continue after Copenhagen, he said, these should be concluded within a specific time frame and without diluting the mandate of the UNFCC.