EU representatives visited Washington yesterday trying to convince US officials not to give up on the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Ms Margot Wallstrom, the EU's Environment Commissioner, Swedish Environment Minister Mr Kjell Larson and a representative of Belgium, the next country to hold the rotating EU presidency, met Environmental Protection Agency head Ms Christine Todd Whitman and were scheduled to visit the State Department and the White House.
"The Kyoto protocol will be at the centre of the discussions, of course, to convince the Americans not to withdraw from the Kyoto protocol," said Ms Nina Erfman, a spokeswoman for the Swedish embassy here.
The White House said last week that the President had decided to ditch the Kyoto Treaty, reached in 1997, because it exempted developing states from emissions cuts and was not in the economic interests of the US. Days earlier, Mr Bush had scrapped a campaign vow to seek mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from US power plants, saying that scientific evidence linking the pollution to global warming was incomplete. Kyoto required 38 rich industrialised countries to cut "greenhouse gases" by 5.2 per cent by 2010.
Ms Todd Whitman said later the US was optimistic of finding ways to handle global warming. In a statement, she said she told EU officials the administration was "optimistic. . . that, working constructively with our friends and allies through international processess, we can develop technologies, market-based incentives and other innovative approaches to global climate change."