While warning of the spin being given to the Prime Minister's signing on to the declaration in Italy, the negotiator has explained in an internal note how the ideas in the political statement, if adopted, could impact India's growth.

But with the special envoy to the PM and the chief negotiator, Shyam Saran, coming out in defence of the statement the rift in the negotiators has now sprung out of the bureaucratic corridors.

The negotiator, continuing to be a part of the government think tank on climate issues and still consulted by the PM and the special envoy along with other negotiators after the Italy meet, refused to comment when contacted. But in his correspondence with other colleagues, he has warned that while India has accepted that it would go below the `business-as-usual' scenario, for a rapidly developing country the phrase itself has little meaning. Only progressively lower energy intensity and parallel lowering of poverty is the real measure of India walking on a green path to development.

He points out that the MEF declaration even when coupled with the developed world's seemingly ambitious target of cutting emissions to 85% below 1990 levels by 2050 would allow the rich nations to occupy more than their equitable carbon space in the atmosphere in perpetuity while leaving India stranded at much lower levels.

Other observers have concluded that under the MEF model, even China and South Africa would be able to surge far ahead of India.

He has written that under an `equitable allocation of environmental space' this occupation of excess carbon space would have to be paid for by the rich nations. "If duly adjusted for time value of money, it amount to trillions of dollars in unpaid climate debt," he has said. He points out that even the British economist Nicolas Stern, whose work on climate is recognized worldwide, accepts it so.

He says that in a fair deal, the industrialized nations would therefore have to pay the full costs of technology and capacity building of reducing emissions in the developing world.

But the MEF statement that India has signed on to, though calling it a mere political line not really enforceable at the UN negotiations, has now weakened the link between actions that India takes and the costs that the rich nations would bear.

At the negotiations, India has demanded full costs passed through the UN convention but at the MEF the government has agreed to only supportive costs including those given outside the UN and through private sector channels.

With all the negotiators TOI contacted refusing to talk, the controversy may get buried as India would now have to prepare to explain its moves to its allies in the G77 and to hunt for holding on to its negotiating space at the next round of UN negotiations in Bonn in August.