Environment Parley Spurs Bush Debate : Pollution: Political advisers who want the President to attend the conference appear to have the upper hand. They fear criticism from Clinton.

Six weeks before the start of the world’s largest environmental conference, the Bush Administration is in the midst of a scalding debate over whether President Bush should attend. But White House officials said Tuesday that the President’s political advisers--who unanimously want him to go--appear to be winning.

Bush, staging a one-person public debate on the issue, said Tuesday that his presence at the U.N. conference in Rio de Janeiro in June “would add a major political impetus to that undertaking.” But, he said, he fears committing the United States “to a course of action that could dramatically impede long-term economic growth in this country.”

The White House has been concerned that Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton might try to score political points today--Earth Day--at the expense of the President by assailing the Administration position on the conference. In fact, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination has scheduled a speech for Philadelphia in which he plans to call on Bush to attend the conference.

“We are mindful it would be the third week in a row that he has stolen our thunder,” a Bush campaign official said of Bush’s effort Tuesday to explain why a decision on the Rio conference is not forthcoming.

Earlier this month, Bush was forced to share the spotlight with Clinton when each gave foreign-policy speeches expressing similar points of view on the same day. A week later, the President embraced an education reform proposal similar to one that Clinton has been promoting.

The President’s public “on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand” approach to the Rio conference--officially the U.N. Conference on the Environment and Development--goes to the heart of the private debate within the Administration over his attendance. His aides, however, are saying that he is almost certain to make the trip. And officials are working behind the scenes to shape the sensitive and potentially expensive treaties that could determine the United States’ long-term commitments to environmental protection here and around the world.

Bush’s failure to take part in the United Nation’s major effort to bring together perhaps 100 heads of government to study the degradation of the environment and what can be done about it would be seen as a gratuitous slap at a key segment of voting America five months before Election Day.

But Bush is reluctant to fly to Rio to be the butt of Third World attacks on his leadership of developed nations or to face demands for economic aid that cannot be met.

The issue has divided the White House staff into two camps, an official there said, with those “who listen to industry” arguing that the cost of strict environmental control “would have us all living in tepees.”

“This is a very important decision,” Bush said in a speech to a group of young business leaders invited to the White House. “It’s an important decision for our environment and it’s a very important decision for our economy. And to play politics with the Rio conference severely undercuts the U.S. position as we try now to assure a world view that will protect the environment and the economy.”

“I’m committed to international cooperation to preserve the world’s environment. I want to be very clear on that. And that’s why I would like to go to the conference,” Bush said. “But I am not going to go . . . and make a bad deal or be a party to a bad deal. I’m not going to sign an agreement that does not protect the environment and the economy of this country.”

He said he will disclose his decision soon. But publicly declaring his intention to go at this point could undercut the private U.S. negotiating position that would keep him at home if the U.S. position does not prevail, officials said.

With the conference scheduled to begin June 3, the preparatory meetings have been completed. But several key issues remain unresolved, among them decisions on how to help less-developed nations expand their economies without hurting the environment and limit carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to control global warming.