India skips key London Climate meet

London: India was the only one of 51 invited countries that didn't attend a two-day ministerial meeting in the UK capital, hosted by the incoming president of the COP26 United Nations .

The conference was designed to lay the groundwork for a successful COP26, which is due to take place in Glasgow in three months time.

COP26 President Alok Sharma has said it will be the last chance to ensure global temperature increases don't exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius -- the lower limit of the Paris Agreement.

A Group of 20 meeting last week failed to clinch a more ambitious agreement on climate, and India was a key holdout. The London event was positioned to follow on from the G-20 with a broader group, meeting mainly in person. India had been due to attend the conference, according to a statement released by Sharma's office beforehand.

Gaurav Khare, a spokesman for India's Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, said the government had decided against attending in person as the country had already made its views known at the G-20 in Naples.

Then technical issues prevented it from taking part virtually. Sharma "has constructive ongoing dialogue with his counterparts in India, having visited the country earlier this year where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi," a spokeswoman for COP26 said.