In its latest submission to the UN, the government has demanded that ministerial round-tables being organized must be comprehensive in nature and should not focus on a particular issue to the exclusion of others.

The special ministerial round of discussions is being held to develop a quicker consensus on the shape that the new global climate change regime, which is to be negotiated by 2015, should take.

The demand reflects India's wariness that the developed countries would push for discussions only on reducing emissions at the cost of forwarding talks on transfer of finance and technology from the rich to the poor countries.

India has reiterated that the legal form of the new deal should not be pre-judged. Instead, the meat of the new deal — what elements and principles it shall have — should be carved out before the countries decide how to give it legal form.

Similarly, India has demanded that the Doha talks not decide a 'work-plan' with specific time-lines and milestones until the basic scope of the new global compact has been decided upon. Worries abound in the developing world that fixing deadlines for the coming three years of talks will permit the developed world to slip in elements on which consensus has not been generated.

The developing world would prefer the guiding principles and elements of a new compact to be fleshed out with consensus as a priority.