However, the Thais were not alone in their silence. Delegates from other developing countries did not speak much either. Only representatives from four developing nations - Brazil, China, India and the Philippines - actually got a word in at the Bangkok conference.

"We did not say a word because we did not make a prior agreement about who should speak," said Jessada Luengjam, a Thai delegate from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

He added it was more a problem of unplanned organisation than anything else.

"When we had meetings to discuss the draft report, each related agency made a lot of observations and noted how we should react, but when it came to the actual meeting, nobody was assigned to make a statement, so we were not sure who should speak," Jessada said.

Jessada said he wondered why the Thai government did not appoint representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as the country's delegates.

"Unlike state officials, many NGOs wanted to debate," he said.

Thailand was allowed to have 22 delegates as the host country, while everyone else sent only one or two representatives.

However, only 12 Thai delegates attended the summit yesterday. Almost all of the 22 delegates were senior officials of state agencies related to the issue, including representatives from the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment.

It was not even clear who was the head of the Thai delegation.

Kasemsan Jinnawaso, secretary general of the Office of Natural Resources and Environment Policy and Planning, was the most senior official at the conference, but when contacted by The Nation to ask who was in charge, he appeared uncertain, saying: "Me, or not?"

Jessada said that seven pages of the 24-page draft had been discussed as of yesterday evening.

Officials from Switzerland, the United States, Austria and Germany were among the most active speakers during the first two days of the summit - and mostly argued about the technical terminology, he said.

The summit is to finalise the third and final volume of the scientists' latest assessment on climate change since the formation in 1988 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN panel to assess scientific, technical and socio-economic information, relevant to understanding human-induced climate change.

The European Union yesterday organised a press conference at its office on Wireless Road in Bangkok to call on developing countries to take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gases.

Tom van Ierland, a climate change expert with the European Union and also a delegate of the EU to the summit, said to reach the goal of keeping temperatures from climbing more than two degrees Celsius, an EU ambitious goal, co-operation from developing countries is essential.

"We need to ensure that in the coming years the growth of emissions in developing countries is reduced and eventually capped to be in line with our two degree objective," he said.

Pennapa Hongthong,

Nantiya Tangwisutijit

The Nation