President Expected to Issue New Call for International Global Warming Meeting : Environment: The conference would seek a pact to control pollutants. Sources say the issue divides the White House.

Amid reports that Administration officials are divided over the global warming issue, President Bush is expected on Monday to renew his invitation to world governments to meet here to begin negotiating an international agreement to control atmospheric pollutants.

His invitation will come as representatives of about 50 countries convene the third plenary session of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is attempting to address the environmental threat posed by heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases.

Sources who declined to be identified said Saturday that the President’s remarks to the panel’s opening session had become a source of dispute between Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly, White House science adviser D. Allan Bromley, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.

According to the sources, Sununu, known to be the Administration’s chief skeptic about forecasts of destructive climate warming, wanted the President to take a less aggressive approach to the problem than recommended by the other three advisers.

While Bush was meeting at Camp David. Md., with his newly appointed Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, White House officials Saturday denied reports that Sununu had ordered a toning down of planned presidential remarks emphasizing the seriousness of the global warming threat.

But sources familiar with the deliberations acknowledged that there had been a disagreement among Administration officials over the contents of the President’s speech after it was drafted about the middle of last week.

Sources said the initial draft of the speech emphasized Administration statements and actions over the past year addressing global warming as a major environmental concern.

Because Sununu favored a more conservative approach noting uncertainties in the scientific evidence about climate warming, the remarks continued to be discussed the rest of the week, sources said.

James Tripp, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, said he had been told by Administration officials that Bush would renew his offer to host an international global warming convention and also would announce an April meeting here of world scientific experts on the issue.

Tripp said the President also intended to call for a strengthening of the Montreal Protocol controlling chlorofluorocarbons, widely used synthetic gases that damage the ozone layer of the atmosphere.

The three-day Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting beginning Monday is another step toward a planned report on the state of existing scientific knowledge about global warming, its potential social and economic impacts and possible responses by world governments.

The United States chairs the panel’s working group addressing responses and strategies, and its members planned to meet over the weekend to hear updates from subcommittees.

Drafts of the working-group reports are due to be completed next spring and submitted to the next plenary meeting of the panel, set for August in Stockholm.

Although the panel was not established as a negotiating body, Administration officials expressed hope last week that panel members would vote to accept the President’s offer, first made at the Malta summit, to host a negotiating convention in Washington.

If such a resolution is adopted this week and approved by officials of the U.N. Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, negotiations could begin before the end of the year.

The United States would prefer that efforts to negotiate an international agreement controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases contributing to the greenhouse effect follow the pattern of the negotiations leading to international controls on chlorofluorocarbons.

In that case, countries signed a general agreement in 1985 committing themselves to a reduction of the gases. The participants then adopted implementing protocols, which were signed two years later.

At an international meeting convened by the Dutch government last November, the U.S. delegation declined to go along with a goal of stabilizing emissions of greenhouse gases at current levels by the year 2000, insisting on a goal of stabilization “as soon as possible.”

It insisted that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had been established as the forum for formal consideration of the issue.