Posted on 10-4-2002

US Hijacking UN Summit?
Story by Irwin Arieff, REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

UNITED NATIONS - Environmental groups last week accused the United States
and oil exporting nations of trying to gut a global action plan for
environmentally friendly development to be adopted at a U.N. summit in South
Africa. Organizers of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, opening
in Johannesburg in August, acknowledged the meeting could fall far short of
what they had hoped, but said it could still succeed if governments wanted.

Greenpeace International accused Washington of trying to use the conference
to dismantle "more than three decades of international efforts to protect
the environment, enhance social justice and ensure economic opportunities
for all. "The United States' only vision is that this planet should be run
like a business park," Greenpeace's Remi Parmentier told a news conference
at U.N. headquarters.

Daniel Mittler of Friends of the Earth International blamed Washington -
with help from Canada, Australia and OPEC countries including Saudi Arabia
and Venezuela - for "two weeks of chaotic negotiations resulting in a long
document, strong on platitudes but weak on substance." Mittler urged
governments preparing for the Johannesburg conference to "chuck the fluff"
from the action plan as it now stood and drastically rewrite it. A U.S.
official dismissed the criticisms, saying Washington was working hard to
make the conference a success and shared the groups' desire for a healthy
environment "although we may disagree on the tactics to get there. "You can
have a safe and healthy environment and develop at the same time. We are a
good example of that," said the official, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "We also produce a lot of pollution but we are working hard to
reduce it."

10 YEARS AFTER EARTH SUMMIT

The 10-day summit opening Aug. 26 is expected to draw thousands from
government, business and interest groups to Johannesburg along with
delegations from most of the United Nations' 189 member-nations. It was
timed to fall 10 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which
adopted "Agenda 21," a blueprint for balancing the world's economic and
social needs with its environmental resources. Organizers say part of the
problem is that, even at this stage, they have a hard time saying precisely
what the conference is intended to achieve.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described it as an environmental
conference teamed with a strategy meeting on how to achieve broad
development goals set out by the world body at its 2000 millennium summit.
The millennium goals include halving the number of people living on less
than a dollar a day, and reversing the AIDS epidemic by the year 2015. But
many others see it as far broader - a summit in search of a global
blueprint for altering the sum total of human activity so that it no longer
depletes the world's resources. "Sustainable development is about human
activity and the Earth. It must include every aspect of life," said Carlos
Rivera, an activist participating in summit preparations as a
representative of young people.

The environmentalists' criticisms surfaced at the close of the third of
four two-week preparatory meetings leading up to Johannesburg. One more
preparatory session opens in Bali, Indonesia, on May 27. While preparations
have been conducted by low-level envoys to date, cabinet ministers have
been invited to Bali. The action plan began as a 21-page document drafted
by Emil Salim, a former Indonesian environment minister who is chairing the
preparatory meetings. By Friday it had ballooned to more than 100 pages,
and delegates were far from agreement on a final version, Salim said.