The Nation - News from May 7, 1989

Members of the Bush Administration are divided over whether the United States should assume a greater leadership role when a United Nations-sponsored meeting on global warming opens Monday in Geneva, Administration officials said. William K. Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, urged the White House to make an official diplomatic overture by calling for an international convention on the greenhouse effect, but Chief of Staff John H. Sununu said the idea was premature and more analysis was required, officials said. Reilly and Fred Bernthal, the assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental affairs, contended it would be a strong symbolic move for Bush to urge a convention of nations to develop a framework agreement on how to combat the global warming trend, the the officials said.