ENVIRONMENT : U.S. Weighs Its Position on Drilling in Antarctic

Should man be allowed to drill for oil and gas in the Antarctic?

That question hangs in the balance as the United States and 25 other major industrial nations prepare to confront whether to ban mineral exploration on the continent and in its adjacent waters.

The other nations, arguing that any serious drilling would quickly ruin the wild, pristine Antarctic, are pushing to bar the exploration for minerals for at least 50 years, a compromise from an earlier position in which they had sought a permanent prohibition.

But the Bush Administration, itself divided over the issue, has been insisting on a far-shorter embargo, followed by government regulation of activities in the region. A 50-year ban may prove far too long--assuming the technology improves, it contends.

“We don’t believe that we should foreclose forever the possibility of some future generation making a decision to allow mining under required safe conditions,” Assistant Secretary of State Curtis (Buff) Bohlen told a congressional committee.

The debate is expected to come to a head next week, when the United States and 11 other countries that signed a preliminary accord, along with 14 more that are conducting research programs on the continent, are slated to meet in Madrid hoping to adopt tough new prohibitions.

At this point, the United States is the only holdout. Until April, Britain also had opposed making any ban indefinite, but after a meeting of potential signatories London changed its stand, leaving Washington isolated on the issue.

The Bush Administration currently is taking a second look at the U.S. position. A high-level interagency panel is conducting an accelerated review of the issue, and hopes to have a firm position hammered out within a few days.

U.S. officials say the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs has been the chief opponent of joining in the 50-year ban. But almost all sides agree that the question will almost certainly be settled on broader political grounds.

The Monday meeting in Madrid will come almost exactly 30 years after the signing of the first international treaty designed to protect the Antarctic from development--the landmark Antarctic Treaty of 1961.

The pact, which barred military activities in the region and prohibited territorial competition, sought to turn the then-unspoiled Antarctic into a 5.4-million-square-mile scientific and environmental laboratory. But it ended up being far from complete.

Last year, Congress passed a resolution, which President Bush eventually signed, calling for the preservation of Antarctica as a global ecological commons that would be permanently protected from mineral exploration and other kinds of development.

Since then, Sen. Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.), the major sponsor of the measure, has been criticizing the Administration for refusing to agree to a permanent ban, dismissing the Economic Bureau’s position as an “ideological knee-jerk view.”

In fact, however, even the State Department is split. Although the Economic Bureau opposes a permanent ban, the State Department’s environmental office has proposed that the United States go along with the proposal next week in Madrid.