India should play a major role in climate change: Britain

Britain has said it wants India to play a major global role on the issue of climate change, similar to its active participation in peace keeping.

"Just as you are already playing a major role in (UN) peace keeping, we want India to play a bigger role in climate change, which is already having its impact," said Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, who was the Chief Guest at a reception jointly hosted by the Labour Friends of India, led by British MP Barry Gardiner and the Indian High Commissioner Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, at Manchester.

Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State, department of International Development; Sir Gulam Noon, NRI industrialist; Virendra Sharma, Labour MP; Jordana Diengdo K Pavel, among others were also present here.

Miliband, widely considered a potential prime ministerial candidate, said that the UK-India relationship was a "partnership of equals."

"India is genuinely emerging as a power and in it the Indian diaspora is a huge source of strength" he said, adding "we are lucky to have such a diaspora."

Referring to India's role in the world, Miliband said "many of us have many expectations. We want India to play a big role in climate change and we have to work with India as a genuine partner of equals."

High Commissioner Mukherjee recalled India's first Prime Minister Pandit Nehru's famous lines about "A tryst With destiny" and said, "Sixty years down the line, we are quite a way ahead with the 'tryst with destiny' but there was a great deal yet to be done in wiping out tears from eyes of the weakest of the weak."