United States Foreign Relations Third World

Walking a fine philosophical line in the first United Nations speech of his Administration, President Bush proclaimed the defeat of Marxism on Monday but, at the same time, he carefully avoided criticism of the Soviet Union or its leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev. "Today is freedom's moment," Bush declared in a speech that often echoed the ideological rhetoric of the early years of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan, but skirted the former President's harsh Cold War characterizations of Soviet policy.

Stung by disclosures after Operation Desert Storm about the magnitude and capabilities of Iraq's arsenal, President Bush signed a secret finding last year authorizing the CIA to develop plans, including covert action, to block proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, according to informed U.S. sources. The presidential finding mandated that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies make arms proliferation one of their top priorities.

The conspicuous rout of Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf War may have buoyed public feeling in the United States and other industrialized countries, but to some developing countries it has been another sign of the declining leverage of the Third World. While President Bush hailed the allied victory as evidence of a return of U.S.

Shrugging off two weeks of incessant criticism from government representatives and environmental activists gathered at the Earth Summit, President Bush declared Saturday that he is prepared to campaign for reelection as the "environmental President." On the day after his controversial nine-minute appearance before the 178-nation gathering, he called his environmental record one that "I will be proud to take to the American people."

The Washington summit, the first superpower meeting of the post-Cold War era, has seen relations between the United States and the Soviet Union begin a historic transformation--away from almost half a century of frozen enmity toward an active willingness to help each other. The two countries still have major differences over several fundamental issues.

American business, fearful of sweeping ecological treaties that could hamper growth and profits, has been striving to influence the results of the coming world summit on the environment and to develop its own agenda for attacking the planet's ills. For U.S.

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev is rated more favorably than President Bush in largely Republican Orange County, which handed Bush and Ronald Reagan their greatest margins of victory of any county in the nation in the last three presidential elections. In this bellwether conservative region, The Los Angeles Times Orange County Poll has found signs of new thinking on both foreign and domestic issues.

A delegate from India to the global environmental summit here bemoaned his country's 18 years of efforts to purchase American technology for making chemicals that are used in refrigeration. Not until 1986 did India get the technology--just as manufacturers were beginning to realize how environmentally harmful their product was. Three years later, the world moved to protect the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation by rapidly phasing out use of the ozone-depleting chemicals.

In unexpected ways, the Libyan crisis has regenerated some of the dormant tension between the United States and the Third World at the United Nations, raising doubts about any future actions against Moammar Kadafi. The Libyan leader has almost no supporters at the United Nations, especially after Thursday's semiofficial sacking of the Venezuelan Embassy in Tripoli as punishment for Venezuela's Security Council role in imposing sanctions on the North African country.

Proposals on financing to ban ozone-destroying chemicals sparked a clash between the United States and the Third World at an international conference in London, delegates said. Under consideration are measures to strengthen the protocol that commits 56 nations to a 50% cut in the production of chlorofluorocarbons by 1999.

Finding himself isolated at the Earth Summit, President Bush on Friday issued an unapologetic defense of America's environmental record and said that leadership sometimes requires a nation to stand alone. "I did not come here to apologize," Bush told more than 110 world leaders in his brief formal address. "We come to press on with deliberate purpose and forceful action."

With this bustling Brazilian city braced for the arrival of 116 presidents and prime ministers, delegates to the 178-nation summit on the global environment and world development Wednesday night closed in on their last elusive agreements. Though differences persisted over financing language that had kept negotiators at work on Tuesday night until almost 4 a.m.

A delegate from India to the global environmental summit here bemoaned his country's 18 years of efforts to purchase American technology for making chemicals that are used in refrigeration. Not until 1986 did India get the technology--just as manufacturers were beginning to realize how environmentally harmful their product was. Three years later, the world moved to protect the planet from harmful ultraviolet radiation by rapidly phasing out use of the ozone-depleting chemicals.

A parade of nations began signing a biological diversity treaty Friday without the United States joining in, further diminishing its already battered stature at a global environmental summit here. A spokeswoman for the United Nations Environment Program said at least 40 nations, including Germany, France and Canada, have pledged to sign the pact, aimed at conserving plants, animals and microorganisms and their habitat. Ratification by 30 nations is required for the treaty to take effect.

Malaysia warned Third World nations Friday to resist the hijacking of the Rio Earth Summit by a United States seeking to turn the meeting into a "forestry finger-pointing exercise." "This is an economic war. The North is using such tactics to try to stay on top of this economic war," he said. "Malaysia is in the forefront to prevent the U.S. hijacking," he told reporters.

The Earth Summit, once heralded as a sweeping global effort to attack the planet's environmental ills, will open in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday amid vastly reduced expectations. Hopes for major breakthroughs on threats ranging from global warming to the loss of forests plummeted during negotiations over the past several months as developing nations demanded money and technology in exchange for environmental reform and industrialized nations bristled at being blamed for their problems.

Carlos Andres Perez, a center-left advocate of Third World causes, returned to the presidency of Venezuela on Thursday with an appeal to the Bush Administration to treat Latin Americans as partners in a search for solutions to guerrilla conflicts and unpayable foreign debts.

Dealing a serious blow to an environmental and development summit about to convene in Brazil, the Bush Administration decided Friday against signing a treaty designed to protect wildlife and its habitat around the world. The pact, concluded last week in Nairobi, Kenya, is one of two major treaties to be signed during the two-week Earth Summit, which opens Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. Since the text of the agreement was completed, Administration officials had made it clear that U.S.

The centerpiece of the June Earth Summit, already denounced by environmental activists as a historic failure, has turned out to be a monument to the clout of the United States. Thanks to the Bush Administration, government leaders will sign a global warming treaty that has none of the teeth sought by U.S. allies and trading partners in the industrialized world. It will include no specific timetable for stabilizing emissions, nor will it set mandatory emission levels.