Bush will not sign treaty if it costs too many jobs
WASHINGTON — President George Bush has defended his environmental record strongly and said he would not be pressured into signing an Earth Summit treaty that "throws too many Americans out of work".
"If they don’t understand it in Rio, too bad," he said. "I’m not going to be driven by the extremes in the environmental movement," he told a prime-time news conference here on Thursday.
Mr Bush is to make a brief visit to the summit on June 12. He agreed to attend only after a draft treaty aimed at combating the global warming phenomenon was watered down.
The US — which succeeded in removing specific limits and dates for emission reductions during negotiations — is expected to sign, possibly during Mr Bush’s visit.
But he made it clear that he would accept no conditions that would put a costly burden on American industries.
"I have some responsibilities: Responsibility for a cleaner environment, but also responsibility to families in this country who want to work, some of whom can be thrown out of work if we go for too costly an answer to some of these problems," he said.
He said some critics in Rio "started protesting before they even knew what our position was".
The President, worried that a sluggish economy would hurt his pro is for re-election, noted t the US spent US$800 bull (S$1.3 trillion) in the last 10 years to clean up the environment and would spend another US$1.2 trillion in the next decade.
In LONDON, a government official said on Thursday that Prime Minister John Major expected to sign the treaty to protect endangered animals and plants when he attended the Rio Earth Summit next week.
But the official said Mr Major still had lingering doubts over funding for the so-called biodiversity convention and would discuss these concerns with Mr Bush at their weekend summit in Camp David, outside Washington.
"We hope and expect to sign," said the official, briefing reporters on Mr Major’s week-long trip to the US, Colombia and Brazil which begins today.
The official expressed regret that the US had said it would not sign the convention but left open the possibility of a change of heart.
"We regard that as unfortunate if that’s the case but it’s not settled yet," he said. "The ideal would be that it was an agreement that everyone could sign.’
Britain expressed reservations on the grounds of funding earlier this week but officials said Mr Major would try to persuade Washington to find a way around its objections. — Reuter, AP.
Source : The Straits Times, June 6, 1992
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