Gail Alexan­der

?CHOGM chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has come in for high praise from his fel­low lead­ers for spear­head­ing Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' head­way on the cli­mate change is­sue. Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd com­mend­ed Man­ning's chair­man­ship in bring­ing about the Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' Port-of-Spain Cli­mate Change con­sen­sus. "This is a most im­por­tant de­c­la­ra­tion," Rudd added. UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon high­ly com­mend­ed Man­ning's lead­er­ship and Den­mark Prime Min­is­ter Lars Rass­mussen on the is­sue. Rass­mussen said, "I want to ex­press my grat­i­tude to Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning for or­gan­is­ing this very im­por­tant meet­ing and for invit­ing me and the UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al.

"We ap­pre­ci­ate this op­por­tu­ni­ty for dis­cussing this cru­cial is­sue with so many dis­tin­guished lead­ers." Rass­mussen said it was im­por­tant to have "good friends" with the chair­man in or­der to reach an agree­ment in Copen­hagen. Man­ning con­grat­u­lat­ed Rass­mussen on what he said was like­ly to be a suc­cess­ful out­come of the Copen­hagen con­fer­ence. (GA)