The panel, likely to be announced in the coming days by Ban, will be co-chaired by British PM Gordon Brown and Ethopian PM Meles Zenawi. Sources said India had forwarded Ahluwalia's name as its representative on the high-powered group.

The panel comes as an initiative of the UNSG after the Copenhagen Accord was negotiated between 29 influential countries, including India, at the Danish capital in December.

The Copenhagen accord provides for a start-up fund for adaptation and mitigation to the tune of $30 billion, which is to be generated by developed countries between 2010-2012 and used by the most vulnerable developing countries. By 2020, the accord requires mobilisation of $100 billion to address the needs of developing countries arising out of climate change.

Though the accord signified a sum for the fund to be collected, it had left it pretty much open for countries to figure out how to mobilise the funds. With the developed countries not keen upon direct state-to-state transfer, the negotiations on the accord had ended with funding from "a wide variety of sources", including public and private, bilateral and multilateral monies as sources.

Ban had stepped up to suggest that he would set up a high level panel to thrash out the details of the funds referred to in the political pact. But his letter about it to governments had caused some confusion as he suggested the work of the panel would be enmeshed with that of the formal UN negotiations on climate change but the UN climate convention's executive secretary had claimed that the convention had nothing to do with the proposal and that it was purely the UNSG's baby.

The formation of the panel, sources said, also hints at changes being sought by some developed countries in the negotiating dynamics with the UNSG and UN headquarters at New York playing a greater role in brokering deals between key countries rather than the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Many climate analysts considered close to the present regime in the US and other powerful voices in the industrialised countries have suggested that the UNFCCC -- which works on consensus of more than 180 countries -- is not the forum to thrash out a detailed deal and have suggested using smaller albeit less democratic forums for the purpose. Indian negotiators have generally been averse to such a move though a constant engagement with all key forums has been mooted.

India had earlier sent a terse response to the UNSG's suggestions on how to take the Copenhagen accord forward. The UNSG had also come under fire from other developing countries at the Copenhagen meet for pushing the developed countries' agenda.