Cop28 president denies on eve of summit he abused his position to sign oil deals
Sultan Al Jaber, the president of the UN Cop28 climate summit, has hit back strongly at reports he abused his position to try to sign oil deals with other governments, as the United Arab Emirates prepares to host the biggest Cop meeting yet.
Al Jaber’s role is to act as an “honest broker” for the 190-plus governments gathering at the global climate talks, charged with leading them to a successful conclusion. He is also the chief executive of UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, and campaigners say the two roles are in conflict.
This week the Centre for Climate Reporting, an investigative journalism group, and the BBC released documents that appeared to show that meetings the Cop28 presidency had with other governments included “talking points” about the potential sale of oil and gas by Adnoc.
Speaking to a small group of journalists in Dubai on the eve of the conference on Wednesday, Al Jaber said: “These allegations are false. Not true, incorrect, not accurate. It’s an attempt to undermine the work of the Cop28 presidency … Never ever did I see these talking points or ever used such talking points in my discussions.”
He added: “Do you think the UAE or myself need the Cop or the Cop presidency to go and establish better deals or commercial relationships? This country over the past 50 years has been built around its ability to build bridges and create relationships and partnerships.”
Campaigners were unsatisfied with the response. Alice Harrison, the fossil fuel campaign lead at Global Witness, said: “The international climate process has been hijacked by the oil and gas industry. This leak must be the final nail in the coffin of the long debunked idea that the fossil fuel industry can play any part in the solution to the crisis that it created.”
More than 160 heads of state and government are expected to arrive in Dubai on Thursday and Friday to try to put the world on track to meet the target of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C (2.7F) above preindustrial levels. King Charles will give an opening speech on Friday, and the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, will also attend, as will Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, and presidents including Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and India’s Narendra Modi.
The pope has cancelled his visit for health reasons, while Joe Biden and Xi Jinping of China are expected to stay away, leaving their envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua to meet in Dubai instead.
Nearly 100,000 delegates are registered to Cop28, and 400,000 visitors are expected at the “green zone” area of business and technology exhibitions adjoining the summit.
Al Jaber said the Cop was the most important since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015. From next Monday, when the world leaders will have departed, ministers and high-level officials will carry on a further eight days of negotiations over climate finance for poor countries, making the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to stay within the 1.5C limit, and whether to phase out fossil fuels.
Pa’olelei Luteru, Samoas ambassador to the UN and the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), told the Guardian that the 1.5C limit was the fundamental issue for his member governments. Scientists predict that above 1.5C, sea level rises and storm surges will render many small islands and coastal areas around the world uninhabitable and worsen heatwaves, droughts and floods.
“We have to hang everything on 1.5C,” said Luteru. “For us, this is about our survival.”
The world is currently about 1.2C above preindustrial levels, and this year has seen record temperatures, Some scientists have suggested that hopes of making the emissions cuts necessary for 1.5C have now vanished and that the Cop talks should reflect that. Luteru rebuffed this, pointing to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which found that the 1.5C target was still just feasible.
Some countries might prefer to give up the 1.5C target as an excuse for making less stringent emissions cuts. “We’ve got to be careful because the reality is that there are also special interest groups out there,” Luteru said. “They will say what they say to satisfy their own constituents. But we are steadfast in our view that we must keep to 1.5C. Because the science has told us that anything above that is going to affect our survival.”
At Cop28, governments and large oil and gas companies are also expected to pledge major cuts in emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that comes largely from oil and gas operations and agriculture. World leaders will also sign a declaration on food, as production around the world will come under increasing pressure from the climate crisis. They are also likely to approve a target of tripling renewable energy generation by 2030.
But major points of contention could still scupper agreement. Rich countries have agreed to set up a loss and damage fund for the rescue and rehabilitation of poor and vulnerable communities stricken by extreme weather, but as yet there is almost no money in it.
Harjeet Singh, the head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, said: “The operationalisation of the loss and damage fund is a non-negotiable priority to urgently support those already suffering from climate-induced disasters. The financial pledges must go beyond setting up the secretariat to actual fund allocation, adequately supporting those who are losing homes, livelihoods and income.”
There is also no agreement over fossil fuels. The UK, the US and the EU want strong language in the final text on “phasing out unabated fossil fuels”, which would allow a limited role for using carbon capture and storage technology. But campaigners would like to excise the word unabated, while many other governments would like to weaken the pledge to “phasing down”.
Most important of all for the 1.5C target, the current emissions-cutting plans of the world’s biggest emitters are nowhere near adequate for the scale of the crisis. Scientists say emissions must be cut by nearly half compared with 2010 levels by the end of this decade, but emissions have continued to rise, reaching record levels this year. Without much stronger action and policies within the next few years, the chance of sticking to the limit will be gone.
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said: “We need a clear signal, based on what is negotiated, that there will be a climate action surge.”
None of the G20 governments, responsible for 80% of global emissions, are likely to make major new pledges at this conference. John Kerry, speaking to journalists in Dubai, said: “I feel confident that we will make progress [at Cop28]. The question is: how much progress?”
allegations of [electoral] fraud when, in fact, it was full of such claims.”
Cheney also says Johnson was neither the author of the brief nor a “constitutional law expert”, as he was “telling colleagues he was”. Pro-Trump lawyers actually wrote the document, Cheney writes.
In a statement to the Guardian, a spokesperson for Johnson said Cheney was “not presenting an accurate portrayal”.
As Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden progressed towards the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, Cheney was a House Republican leader. Turning against Trump, she sat on the House January 6 committee and was ostracised by her party, losing her Wyoming seat last year.
Her book, Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Johnson became speaker last month, after McCarthy was ejected by the Trumpist far right, the first House speaker ever removed by his own party.
On Tuesday, CNN ran excerpts from Cheney’s book, quoting her view that Johnson “appeared especially susceptible to flattery from Trump and aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit”.
CNN also reported that Cheney writes: “When I confronted him with the flaws in his legal arguments, Johnson would often concede, or say something to the effect of, ‘We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.’”
But Cheney’s portrait of Johnson’s manoeuvres is more comprehensive and arguably considerably more damning.
The case in which the amicus brief was filed saw Republican states led by Texas attempt to persuade the supreme court to side with Trump over his electoral fraud lies.
It did not. As Cheney points out, even the two most rightwing justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who wanted to hear the case, said they would not have sided with the complainants.
Cheney describes how Johnson, then Republican study committee chair, emailed GOP members on 9 December 2020 to say Trump had “specifically” asked him to request all Republicans in Congress “join on to our brief ”.
Johnson, Cheney says, insisted he was not trying to pressure people and simply wanted to show support for Trump, by “affirm[ing] for the court (and our constituents back home) our serious concerns with the integrity of our electoral system” and seeking “careful, timely review”.
“Mike was seriously misleading our members,” Cheney writes. “The brief did assert as facts known to the amici many allegations of fraud and serious wrongdoing by officials in multiple states.”
Johnson, she says, then told Republicans that 105 House members had expressed interest. “Not one of them had seen the brief,” Cheney writes. She also says he added “a new inaccurate claim”, that state officials had been “clearly shown” to have violated the constitution.
“But virtually all those claims had already been heard by the courts and decided against Trump.”
Calling the brief “poorly written”, Cheney says she doubted Johnson’s honesty and asked him who wrote it, as “to assert facts in a federal court without personal knowledge” would “present ethical questions for anyone who is a member of the bar”.
The general counsel to McCarthy, then Republican minority leader, told Cheney that McCarthy would not sign the brief, while McCarthy’s chief of staff also called it “a bait and switch”.
McCarthy told her he would not sign on. When the brief was filed, McCarthy had not signed it. But “less than 24 hours later, a revised version … bore the names of 20 additional members. Among them was Kevin McCarthy.
“Mike Johnson blamed a ‘clerical error’ … [which] was also the rationale given to the supreme court for the revised filing. In fact, McCarthy had first chosen not to be on the brief, then changed his mind, likely because of pressure from Trump.”
It took the court a few hours to reject the Texas suit. But the saga was not over. Trump continued to seek to overturn his defeat, culminating in the deadly attack on Congress on 6 January 2021 by supporters whom he told to “fight like hell”.
Cheney takes other shots at Johnson. But in picking apart his role in the amicus brief, she strikes close to claims made for his legal abilities as he grasped the speaker’s gavel last month. Johnson
“was telling our colleagues he was a constitutional law expert, while advocating positions that were constitutionally infirm”, Cheney writes.
Citing conversations with other Republicans about Johnson’s “lawsuit gimmick” (as she says James Comer of Kentucky, now House oversight chair, called it), Cheney says she “ultimately learned” that Johnson did not write the brief.
“A team of lawyers who were also apparently advising Trump had in fact drafted [it],” she writes. “Mike Johnson had left the impression that he was responsible for the brief, but he was just carrying Trump’s water.”
A spokesperson for Johnson said: “Unfortunately, Ms Cheney is not presenting an accurate portrayal of those events. And while he does not plan to purchase a copy of Oath and Honor, Speaker Johnson wishes former representative Cheney and her family the best in whatever her future endeavours may be.”
Earlier, responding to CNN, a Trump spokesperson said Cheney’s book belonged “in the fiction section of the bookstore”.
Cheney also considers the run-up to January 6 and the historic day itself. Before it, she writes, she and Johnson discussed mounting danger of serious unrest. He agreed, she says, but cited support for Trump among Republican voters as a reason not to abandon the president. Such support from Johnson and other senior Republicans, Cheney writes, allowed Trump to create a fullblown crisis.
Two and a half years on, notwithstanding 91 criminal charges, 17 for election subversion, Trump is the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. He polls close to or ahead of Biden.
In certain circumstances, close elections can be thrown to the House – which Mike Johnson now controls.
allegedly working at the direction of the Indian agent, contacted an individual he believed was a criminal associate for help to contract a hitman to murder the target.
But the associate was in fact a confidential source working for US law enforcement, and a purported hitman they introduced Gupta to was an undercover US law enforcement officer.
The supposed hitman was ultimately offered – in a deal allegedly brokered by Gupta – $100,000 to murder the New York City target. As an advanced payment, Gupta arranged for another associate of the Indian agent (CC-1) to deliver $15,000 to the purported hitman.
As the plot unfolded, the Indian agent allegedly sought regular updates from Gupta on how the plan was progressing. Gupta, in turn, provided the Indian agent with surveillance photos and other items. Gupta urged the purported hitman to carry out the murder as soon as possible, but warned him against committing the murder around the time of expected meetings between “high-level US and Indian government officials”.
That detail is a likely reference to a state visit by the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, last June, a high-profile meeting in which Joe Biden called the US and India partnership “stronger, closer and more dynamic than any time in history”.
Nijjar, the Canada-based activist, was assassinated by masked gunmen on 18 June. Hours later, the indictment claims, CC-1 sent Gupta a video clip showing Nijjar’s bloody body slumped in his vehicle, and then the street address of the alleged US victim’s home in New York City.
A day later, Gupta told the undercover officer – who was posing as a hitman – that Nijjar “was also a target” and “we have so many targets”. He added, in light of Nijjar’s killing that there was now “no need to wait” on killing the New York City target.
On 20 June, the Indian agent (CC-1) sent Gupta a news article about the target and said “it’s a priority now”.
Gupta has been charged with murder-for-hire and conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire.
The Guardian has previously reported that, after the murder in Canada, the FBI alerted several US citizens who are also Sikh activists that they were at risk of being targeted.
The Indian government has long complained about the presence of Sikh separatist groups outside India, which campaign for the establishment for an independent Sikh state, known as Khalistan to be carved out of India.
The Indian government has openly pursued Khalistani militants and sympathisers within its own borders, and Sikh groups have accused the government of taking its crackdown on dissent beyond Indian territory.
Pritpal Singh, the founder of the
American Sikh Caucus Committee, who is one of the Americans who was warned by the FBI at the time, said in a statement that he was grateful for the work of the Department of Justice, FBI, New York police department, and Czech law enforcement agencies.
“India displayed blatant disregard for the rule of law when its government orchestrated to kill an American activist on US soil, coinciding with Modi’s White House visit. These revelations are a deeply disturbing development that has shocked our community. The Indian rogue regime must be held accountable, and the perpetrators must be brought to justice,” Singh said.
The news on Wednesday could also renew attention on the death in Britain last June of another Sikh activist, Avtar Singh Khanda, a 35-year-old who died in a Birmingham hospital after a short illness this summer.
His family and a lawyer have sought a formal inquest into his death from the chief coroner for England and Wales, but the request has recently been denied.
The Indian government did not immediately respond to the allegations in the indictment, but after the FT first reported on the alleged plot, a spokesperson for India’s ministry of external affairs said: “During the course of recent discussions on India-US security cooperation, the US side shared some inputs pertaining to nexus between organised criminals, gun runners, terrorists and others. The inputs are a cause of concern for both countries and they decided to take necessary follow-up action.
“On its part, India takes such inputs seriously since it impinges on our own national security interests as well. Issues in the context of US inputs are already being examined by relevant departments.”