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CNN Live At Daybreak

President Bush Prepares for Meetings With Spanish President

Aired June 12, 2001 - 08:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right now Colleen, we move from the weather to the environment. President Bush says he is concerned about global warming, he's just not convinced a treaty is the way to correct it. The president does acknowledge a link between man-made pollutants and global warming, but he will continue to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming because it would damage the U.S. economy, he says.

Mr. Bush says he's going to seek more funding for research into the climate change and work with other nations on curbing greenhouse gases. Well, global warming will likely come up during the president's six-day tour of Europe.

Today, he is in Spain. He arrived this morning in Madrid where he is going to meet the king and queen of Spain. Today is more about ceremony, but substance follows quickly. White House correspondent Major Garrett is traveling with the president.

Good day Major.

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you Carol. How are you?

LIN: Very well, I'm just wondering if the president has blatantly now said that he has no intention of supporting this international agreement on greenhouse gases, what is it that he can offer his critics to calm them?

GARRETT: Well, right now, he hasn't offered them much. What the president has done is basically put a period, an exclamation point, if you will, on the whole conversation between Europe, the United States, and Asia about the Kyoto Protocol. That was signed in 1997.

One hundred and sixty-seven nations signed onto it. It created binding reductions in the admission of greenhouse gases, but only one nation in Europe actually ratified the treaty. No major European developed nations have. When the United States Senate had its chance to sort of look over the treaty, it rejected it 95 to nothing.

Now, the president said that's evidence enough that this Kyoto Protocol simply isn't going to work, that Europe, Asia, and the United States have to think anew about dealing with global warming and the greenhouse gas admission problem, and one thing the president says has to happen is developed nations such as China, which is the number two polluter in the world, have to be added to any sort of protocol. Of course, what Europeans say is the United States is the number one emitter of greenhouse gases responsible for at least 20 percent. Some Europeans say it's as high as 25 percent of greenhouse gases, which many scientists believe are at least contributing to global warming.

So the challenge for the president is to tell the Europeans he does see a new way of dealing with this and persuade them that his new way will actually work. It's a tough challenge, no doubt.

LIN: Sure is, and many other challenges on this trip. He's going to be talking with several leaders about the United States missile defense -- his strategic missile defense plan, obviously a lot of critics there. His diplomatic advance team was sent ahead, didn't make a real convincing argument to these European leaders, so where is President Bush going to take this dialogue then?

GARRETT: Well, the key word for the administration is consultation. What the administration says is it never expected to persuade European leaders overnight to transform its way of looking at regional security from one that was linked to the Cold War, one that was built around the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and to one that's based on a regional ballistic missile defense system -- one that would have to create the cancellation of that 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

They understand it's going to take a long time to persuade. So, what they want to do is consult, bring the European allies and for that matter, the Russian Federation along gradually. That's one of the big agenda items on this trip: not to break through; not to solve it; but to begin the consultation process.

LIN: All right. Thank you very much, Major Garrett, reporting live from Spain. We just want to let our audience know that today President Bush meets with the president of Spain at 11:35 Eastern time.

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