Trinidad Diary 3

It feels a little like telling tales, but I just saw the Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen having a sneaky carbon emission, otherwise known as a cigarette, at the Commonwealth heads of Government Meeting.

It was well away from the Hyatt hotel where the leaders have been meeting and he probably thought he was having a private moment.

He clearly didn't realise he was directly on the path that journalists take when they are heading over to the bilateral meeting rooms.

We were being taking across to see the start of John Key's meeting with Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh.

Perhaps it is a Danish thing. The Queen of Denmark, Margrethe, has vowed never to smoke in public again after being caught in some rather unedifying shots. You can imagine the pair of them at their state dinners, sneaking out the back together to light up.

And no doubt there will be a chance or two for that to happen in the next month at the Copenhagen UN climate change talks that Rasmussen will chair. Perhaps when another famous fagger, Barack Obama, attends the start of the talks.

It goes a way to explaining why he lost his voice at a press conference yesterday.

Rasmussen has wrapped up his mission here in Port of Spain and was at the press conference this morning where a special statement aimed at building momentum for the Copenhagen talks was released.

Australia's clean-living Kevin Rudd has been leading the climate change agenda at Chogm.

Certainly not New Zealand.- John Key is still holding out against going to Copenhagen - or the Canadians who have pledged just a 3 per cent cut on their 1990 emissions by 2020. Apparently they are not going to fund the liabilities they have built up under the Kyoto Protocol, liabilities acquired through its extensive tar sand exports.

Rudd talked hopefully about his Government passing its emissions trading scheme in the coming week - even though Turnbull's support for it is creating absolute mayhem in the opposition Liberal Party.

Rudd heads home tomorrow for more climate change diplomacy via the White House.

Commonwealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma spoke quite passionately at the press conference about the fears of island states such as Kiribati and the Maldives and the practical support he sees the organisation giving to them.

The leaders have done the easy part - putting their weight behind a $10 billion fund to help developing countries to adapt to low-carbon emission policies. The hard part is deciding who pays. That is the sort of thing that will be thrashed out at Copenhagen.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown held a press conference this morning to announce a conference in London in January - chaired by his Foreign Minister David Milliband - on the exit strategy from Afghanistan.

It is all part of a carefully choregraphed plan with the US to try to win public support for the surge that is to be announced by Obama next week. In all likelihood Britain, too will increase its troops on the ground.

-  Audrey Young

PICTURED: Denmark Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. Photo / AP