COPENHAGEN – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday that his country will not sign the declaration being prepared at the climate change summit because it was agreed upon “behind the backs” of most countries.

Chavez was speaking at a high-level session of the summit where he said he was representing the position of Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Ecuador, among other countries.

He said he would not sign any document that U.S. President Barack Obama “has slipped under the door into the conference” and added that the summit will end without an agreement and “without glory.”

Chavez was referring to the text on which a score of nations have been working since before dawn so that the 100 heads of state and government meeting in Copenhagen can reach a final accord Friday on the reduction of greenhouse gases.

“We can’t wait anymore, we’re leaving,” Chavez said, adding that “we’re leaving with the knowledge that it was not possible to reach an accord in Copenhagen.”

He blamed the failure of the summit on the “lack of political will of the most powerful countries” and the “egotistical posturing of the rich.”

“No one invited us to that meeting last night. They didn’t even come to ask us our position,” he said.

“We don’t want to go with bitter feelings of frustration but with happy memories of the people of Copenhagen and Denmark,” he said.

Chavez criticized Obama, who arrived Friday in Copenhagen to take part in the last day of the summit, about whom he said that “he left through the back door” of the plenary session in an “unworthy” manner after speaking for just a few minutes.

“That’s how the Yankee empire abandons the world, through the back door,” he said.

He said his rejection of a statement “imposed” by rich countries is born of “dignity and honor,” and criticized the Copenhagen meeting for establishing categories favoring some leaders over others.

Chavez criticized this procedure as a “lack of transparency” in the negotiating process that, he said, favored a small group of countries when it came time to agree on a declaration and left the great majority out of the discussion.

He said that adopting a declaration that has not been agreed upon by the 192 signatories of the U.N. Convention on Climate Change would be “fraudulent.”

He urged Washington to join the Kyoto Protocol and set binding agreements on the reduction of greenhouse emissions on an international scale, and said that the Obama presidency is “a mere continuation” of the last administration of George W. Bush.

Chavez again blamed capitalism as responsible for climate change, as he did in other speeches at the summit, calling it a system that “is on the road to destroying the planet,” and added that the world will only be saved when “rich countries stop being egotistical.” EFE