Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev has been praising fossil fuel and taking shots at geopolitical rivals, casting a cloud over the climate summit.

The next major United Nations meeting on climate change, known as COP29, is about to get underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. These annual meetings are the key international summits as the world attempts to address the unfolding climate crisis.

Countries at the COP29 summit tried to make progress on how to raise up to $1 trillion in climate finance for the world's most vulnerable, as political tensions overshadowed the talks and Argentina on Thursday pulled its delegation from Baku.

A group of conflict-affected countries is pushing at COP29 to double financial aid to more than $20 billion a year to combat the natural disaster and security crises facing their populations, a letter seen by Reuters showed.

"You owe us!" screamed a protest banner at the COP29 summit in Azerbaijan, where negotiations over how much rich nations most responsible for climate change should pay poorer ones are

Developing countries need at least $1 trillion per year by the end of the decade to cope with climate change, economists told U.N. talks in Baku, where early efforts to reach a finance deal risk being overshadowed by diplomatic rows.