Tanzania will still participate in the forthcoming climate summit slated for France in spite of the recent terror attacks that rocked the country's capital.
The conference is expected to attract close to 50,000 participants including 25,000 official delegates from government, intergovernmental organisations, UN agencies, NGOs and civil society organisations.
Tanzania’s ambassador for climate change Rev Dr Aidan Msafiri told ‘The Guardian’ here on Monday, that all was set for the much awaited summit, and Tanzania like other invited countries will still participate in the summit.
According to Dr Msafiri, who also commiserated with France noted that the recent attacks were meant to divert the attention of the summit and that Tanzania's delegation will travel to the country's capital for the 2015 Paris Climate Conference.
"Our prayers and thoughts are with the families that lost their loved ones in the attacks, but we will not cowed by such barbaric acts, our mission is to save planet earth", he said.
Though he wouldn't disclose the delegation that would travel to Paris for the summit, the ambassador insisted that Tanzania would still participate in the summit.
On Friday, a wave of coordinated attacks left more than 120 dead in scenes of carnage in French capital including scores who were massacred by the attackers shouting "Allahu akbar" during a rock concert and others in a suicide bombing near the national stadium.
Black-clad gunmen wielding AK-47s stormed into the Bataclan concert hall in eastern Paris and fired calmly and methodically at hundreds of screaming concert-goers.
Police said at least 120 people were killed in total at multiple locations in the French capital, which is still reeling from jihadist attacks in January.
The 2015 Paris Climate Conference, will, for the first time in over 20 years of United Nations negotiations, aims to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°Centigrade.
In the same vein, France said it plans to go ahead with a global climate change summit in Paris at the end of the month, the prime minister said on Saturday, despite a wave of deadly attacks on Friday night that killed 127 people in the capital.
The conference "will be held because it's an essential meeting for humanity," Prime Minister Manuel Valls told TF1 television on Saturday evening.
He said the summit would also be an opportunity for world leaders to show their solidarity with France after the attacks.
About 118 world leaders are expected to attend the opening day of the November. 30-December. 11 conference, which is due to nail down a global deal to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions.
In Washington, officials confirmed that both U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry still planned to attend.
"Security at U.N. climate conferences is always tight but understandably it will be even tighter for Paris," said Nick Nuttall, spokesman of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.
The United Nations has the main responsibility for security inside the conference venue at Le Bourget, to the north of the capital.
On Saturday, an angry President Francois Hollande promised a "merciless" response to the wave of attacks by gunmen and bombers that killed 127 people across Paris, describing the assault, claimed by Islamic State, as an act of war.
Organisers of a march to press for climate action planned for Paris on Nov. 29, the eve of the summit, said they would meet on Monday "to discuss ways forward", said Alice Jay, director of the citizens' campaign group Avaaz and one of the organisers.
Organisers have been hoping to imitate a "People's Climate March" in New York last year that attracted hundreds of thousands of people, the largest protest against global warming in history.
Source: The Guardian
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