Argentina Will Back Emissions Treaty President Agrees All Nations Should Limit Greenhouse Gases

Senior administration officials said Friday that President Clinton is set to claim one of the few policy advances to emerge from his tour of South America: an Argentine endorsement of Clinton’s approach to limiting “greenhouse gases” that experts believe cause global warming.

The Argentine president, Carlos Menem, today will endorse the concept that developing nations should be subject to limits on greenhouse emissions in a global treaty to be negotiated in December at Kyoto, Japan, the officials predicted. The Clinton administration, which has yet to unveil its own position on how to limit emissions, consistently has argued that developing countries, not just advanced industrial economies, should be covered under the treaty.

But most developing nations have said that such limits are unfair, since the advanced nations produce most gases and their own economies are still maturing.

Argentina, according to the officials, will break from that position and endorse targets so long as flexibility is preserved in how and when the targets can be reached. Argentine officials were not immediately available to discuss the planned announcement.

But the U.S. officials said Menem also will announce support for “joint implementation agreements,” which would allow firms in different countries to buy and sell pollution permits.

This kind of market-based approach, in which a total amount of pollution is capped by law but firms are able to buy and sell permits based on their needs, has been used in the United States to cap acid rain.

Although Argentina is a wealthy society compared with much of Latin America, it is considered a developing nation by the standards being used for the greenhouse emissions treaty. Administration officials said Argentina’s endorsement could set an important example that may soften the position of other developing nations at Kyoto.

The announcement also will give something tangible for Clinton to take home when he returns Sunday. In previous stops, in Venezuela and Brazil, leaders gave rhetorical pledges to the idea of reducing greenhouse emissions but didn’t make concrete commitments.

Clinton started the day in Buenos Aires, where he met with four leading Argentine journalists. Clinton, according to White House press secretary Michael McCurry, told the journalists that he had pressed Menem in a meeting the day before about the importance “of a free and vigorous press.”

Clinton then flew to Bariloche, a mountain resort community in Patagonia, more than 700 miles southwest of Buenos Aires, that is famous for its mountain vistas and notorious as a refuge to which German Nazis fled after World War II. His schedule here is mostly recreational: After the environmental announcement, Clinton and Menem are planning a round of golf.