WASHINGTON — National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, batting down expectations raised by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said Sunday that the Bush administration has not set a deadline for completing its policy for combating global warming.
Ten days ago in Europe, Powell assured foreign nations that the United States would have a plan developed in time for an October global warming conference in Marrakech, Morocco.
"I don't think we want to set a deadline of a specific meeting," Rice said on CNN's "Late Edition." "But there's no doubt that the United States is working very hard on this problem."
The contradiction highlights emerging division within the White House about how to counter the international Kyoto, Japan, accord regulating global warming, which President Bush has refused to sign.
Richard Haass, director of policy planning for the State Department, explained that formulating a policy has been difficult because "differences have been so pronounced" within the administration.
"The people around the table . . . don't agree," Haass said Friday at the Nixon Center, a Washington think tank.
Despite the divergence of views, Haass said he hoped that "sooner rather than later" a decision would be made by the administration, which appears to be under increasing pressure from Congress, foreign nations and the public to do so.
In Bonn on July 23, the United States sat on the sidelines while 178 countries agreed on rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol, which set a goal of cutting emissions of heat-trapping "greenhouse gases" by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels by 2012.
The Bonn agreement specifies emission reductions for each participating nation, but the overall goal will be much more difficult without the participation of the United States, the world's biggest generator of such gases.
The administration has been roundly criticized by allies around the world and by many congressional leaders at home for rejecting the international accord without offering an alternative. Rice's statement follows a similar suggestion by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman to the Washington Post that the U.S. plans to continue to do its "own thing."
Although Bush has stressed that he considers the problem of global warming to be very important, he has so far offered only to study the issue and develop technologies to cut greenhouse gases here and in developing countries.
