U.S. to Join Fund to Help Curb Ozone Depletion : Environment: Bush shifts stand under pressure from Europeans. They want wealthy nations to finance Third World moves to save atmosphere.

The Bush Administration, in a major shift on a sensitive environmental issue, announced Friday that it will support a proposed international fund to help Third World nations convert their industries away from chemicals that damage the atmosphere’s ozone layer.

The decision, announced in a statement by White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, marks the first time the Administration has been willing to back a specific new mechanism to transfer resources from wealthy, developed nations to poor Third World countries to protect the atmosphere.

Bush had been under heavy pressure from European allies to change the Administration’s reluctance to endorse such a fund. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, for example, wrote to Bush earlier this month asking him to change his position.

Failure to agree on the fund could have led to a public confrontation with European leaders at an international conference on ozone depletion that begins next week in London. It could also have endangered the success of an economic summit meeting of industrialized nations scheduled for early July in Houston.

Officials estimate that the ozone aid fund, to be administered by the World Bank, would cost $100 million over the first three years, with the U.S. contributing 25% of the total. The eventual cost after the first three years is “somewhat open-ended,” an Administration official conceded.

Also on Friday, West German officials announced an ambitious goal of reducing by 25% their country’s emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief source of a second atmospheric problem: global warming.

The German decision, the most far-reaching yet from a major industrialized nation, is likely to further increase political pressure on the Administration, which has resisted calls for quick action on the global warming controversy.

“The dominoes are starting to fall,” said Rafe Pomerance, a World Resources Institute official who is a leading advocate of steps to combat global warming. He and other activists said he expected the move by West Germany--one of the three largest industrial nations--to increase pressure on the United States and Japan to make similar commitments.

“This is the biggest decision by a government on the environment that has ever been made,” Pomerance said.

Many experts predict that transfers of resources from rich nations to poorer ones increasingly will be needed as the international community seeks ways of confronting global environmental threats. Leaders of Third World nations argue they often cannot afford less-polluting technologies and have insisted that, if the rich nations of the developed world are serious about pollution reduction, they should be willing to help.

But Bush and his aides have been wary of such calls, foreseeing a potentially huge cost. Until now, the Administration had insisted that any aid for ozone reduction come out of existing sources of foreign assistance, rather than a new fund.

Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), a leading proponent of the ozone-protection fund, charged in an interview that the turnabout illustrated a lack of Administration initiative on environmental issues.

“They are always a last-minute holdout and an obstacle to progress,” Gore said. “They grudgingly accept that bare minimum, and always at the last minute. They haven’t provided any genuine leadership for the world community.”

The main culprits in the ozone problem are two classes of chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which are used as refrigerants and in some manufacturing processes, and halons, which are used to extinguish fires. Replacements for the ozone-depleting chemicals are gradually becoming available, but they are more expensive than the current compounds.

An international treaty agreed to in 1988 calls on nations to reduce CFCs by 50% and freeze production of halons. The goal of next week’s London meeting is to amend the treaty to call for total elimination of the compounds by the year 2000.

Administration officials insisted Friday their decision to support a fund on ozone, which will primarily help India and China, is contingent on agreement from other countries that the decision will set “no precedent” for other, potentially more costly, aid programs.

In contrast to the estimated $25 million or so the United States would contribute to the ozone fund during its first three years, an international effort to help Third World nations reduce carbon dioxide emissions would be far more expensive.

Reductions in carbon dioxide emissions can carry enormous economic costs, in large part because the chief sources of the gases are the most inexpensive sources of energy--coal, oil and wood.

The German decision on reducing carbon dioxide emissions was announced in Washington Friday by a West German Embassy official, Andreas Klaussen, who described the move as the implementation of a commitment taken by industrial nations at a summit meeting last year in Paris.

A spokesman for the German Environment Ministry, Berthold Goke, acknowledged that the 25% reduction target was “ambitious,” noting that “you have to see that the economy will grow.” The government has not yet announced how it intends to meet the target, but it plans to adopt such measures by the end of the year, officials said.

Officials have decided, however, that the 25% target will be enforced strictly in West Germany, rather than by taking advantage of expected pollution reductions in East Germany as highly polluting and inefficient factories there are closed after the two countries unify.

Staff writer Douglas Jehl contributed to this story. Lauter reported from Washington and Stammer from Los Angeles.