President will not attend Earth Summit

Arguably the most important prospective participant in the Earth Summit in Johannesburg confirmed yesterday that he will skip it altogether. His name is George Bush and almost no one will be surprised at his decision.

Instead, the Bush administration is sending Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, to lead the American delegation at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which is due to discuss ways of raising living standards in developing countries without harming the environment. The decision by President Bush to remain at his Texas ranch instead of attending the meeting, which runs from 26 August to 4 September, is a further reflection of the unwillingness of the United States to participate in a co-ordinated effort to set a ceiling on global warming.

The meeting, the biggest in the history of the United Nations, is meant to discuss different sets of limits on emissions to combat the warming phenomenon. While European nations support the strategy, America favours governments entering less formal partnerships to achieve the same goal.

But the credibility of America elsewhere in the world has been severely strained by the decision last year to pull out of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming.

Mr Bush's absence will give his critics more ammunition. "The United States has not been providing the kind of leadership that's essential if we are going to be trying to deal with the problems of climate degradation and environmental protection and sustainable development," said Jacob Scherr, director of the Natural Resources Defence Council's international programme.

But Mr Bush had been under pressure from the conservative wing of the Republican Party to stay away from Johannesburg. He recently received a letter from a coalition of conservatives asking him to boycott the summit. It was widely expected that he would agree not to go.

"Even more than the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Johannesburg Summit will provide a global media stage for many of the most irresponsible and destructive elements involved in critical international economic and environmental issues," the letter said.

"Your presence would only help to publicise and make more credible their various anti-freedom, anti-people, anti-globalisation and anti-Western agendas."