INTERVIEW - Absent Bush committed to Earth Summit, US says
Date: 26-Aug-02
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Ed Stoddard
"President Bush has been fully engaged and committed now for months to the summit," John Turner, the U.S. assistant secretary for international environmental affairs, told Reuters in response to widespread criticism of Bush's absence.
"But there is a need now for his leadership in the U.S. on security, international and domestic, and on the economy. He's really focused on those two issues," Turner added.
He said Bush would show his commitment to Africa when he visits the world's poorest continent next year.
Environmentalists have slammed Bush for opting to stay away from the U.N.'s World Summit on Sustainable Development, which begins on Monday, saying it showed a failure of leadership on the part of the world's richest and most powerful nation.
Secretary of State Colin Powell will take Bush's place at the finale of the 10-day summit, which is expected to draw about 100 other world leaders.
Bush's environmental record has made green activists see red, notably when he pulled out of the Kyoto pact meant to limit fossil fuel emissions linked to global warming.
This week he eased logging regulations to speed the removal of trees from fire-prone U.S. forests, a move critics say will be ecologically damaging and a windfall for the timber industry.
Environmentalists have also accused the U.S. of attempting to water down a global action plan on reducing poverty while protecting the environment that is the summit's raison d'etre.
Experts were meeting behind closed doors on the weekend to narrow differences on the draft action plan, which ministers failed to fully agree on at the last round of official pre-summit talks in Indonesia in June.
Developing nations have criticised Washington for blocking demands for new aid money and new, firm targets with deadlines for action on improving the environment. U.S. officials argue there is no need to go beyond agreements made elsewhere.
"I'm optimistic that we will be successful early in the conference in finalising the text," Turner said.
Some observers have said the North/South rift on funding and timeframes may torpedo the plan - and the summit.
Turner said one of Washington's priority areas in the field of sustainable development was the protection of forests, especially the biologically rich forests found in the tropics.
He noted that the United States was working with several countries in the Congo basin in central Africa to create a nature reserve to protect tropical forests and promote job-generating ecotourism opportunities.
