CHOGM Diary

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia summed it all up at a media briefing: 'This is not a business-as-usual Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting'. The meeting opened against a background of local newspaper speculation about the relevance of the Commonwealth, although a 2-inch-deep front-page headline proclaiming that it had become irrelevant was not borne out by the report carried inside the paper. This was a green Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held just days before the much trumpeted UN climate change conference on Copenhagen. The summit brought together at a critical moment the French President and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. Sarkozy, a strong proponent of action on climate change, made much of the importance of India to the Copenhagen process.