Rio Negotiators Search for Finance Plan : Summit: Accord is sought for a long-term global environmental agenda. Resolution of the issue is not expected quickly.

Starting from “ground zero” and with less than a week to work, negotiators Thursday set out in search of an agreement for financing a global environmental agenda reaching into the next century.

A last-ditch bid to adopt a plan in advance of the Earth Summit now under way outside Rio collapsed in New York on April 3, leaving diplomats faced with the daunting task of shaping a pact while in the vortex of the huge Earth Summit meeting here.

The climactic deliberations are expected to continue far into the night and through the coming weekend. Joseph C. Wheeler, a United Nations official who is director of Program Integration for the summit, predicted there will be no resolution of the crucial issue “until the last minute of the two weeks.”

But as negotiators went to work on the blank financing chapter and disputed passages on 350 pages of the action plan called Agenda 21, they were told they have a “rigid, not flexible” deadline of next Wednesday.

By the estimate of United Nations officials, the world’s industrial powers would have to come up with as much as $125 billion in aid just to help developing countries fully meet their obligations in 115 programs. Such commitments are not expected to be made here. The financing negotiations are aimed at first resolving a dispute between the industrial powers and the developing bloc over the means of managing the additional assistance.

The United States and the other major industrial powers continue to insist that the funds be handled through the Global Environmental Facility, a fledgling organization backed by the World Bank, the United Nations Environmental Program and the United Nations Development Program.

But developing countries and environmental organizations critical of the World Bank’s environmental record are holding out for special “green funds” strongly directed by recipient countries.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly, chairman of the U.S. summit delegation, said Thursday that Washington is opposed to “a whole new apparatus.”

“Nor do we wish to see a proliferation of new funds, each of which would be an occasion for us to be asked for more,” he said.

The debate over funding Third World environmental protection and sustainable development has caused the most serious split between the rich and poor among the 178 nations taking part in the summit.

According to sources in the Bush Administration, the prospect of the United States being faced with demands for huge new financial assistance to developing countries was one of the reasons President Bush long delayed a decision on joining other world leaders here next week.

During the final round of preparatory meetings for the summit, negotiators came close to achieving an accord on a funding mechanism, but time ran out.

Subsequently, it was agreed that the Global Environmental Facility would be the agency to handle funding of the global warming treaty--and of the just-completed biological diversity treaty, provided that it makes reforms to allow more participation by recipient countries in its deliberations.

In a speech to Earth Summit delegates, World Bank President Lewis Preston said Thursday that the bank would use a portion of its profits for environmental projects if member nations approved.

“We all have a stake in safeguarding the planet and the future of our children and grandchildren,” Preston said. He told reporters the proposed assistance would “not be a token amount” but would depend on the bank’s interest-rate profits.

With Bush’s announcement that the United States will provide $150 million per year for tropical forest protection, the United States has agreed to a total of an additional $250 million per year in environmental assistance.

But as the President’s point man at the summit, Reilly has found himself repeatedly called upon to defend the level of U.S. support for world environmental programs.

The United Nations has a longstanding goal for the developed countries to commit 0.7% of their gross national product to overseas development assistance. To meet that objective the United States would have to nearly triple its foreign aid.

While the United States ranks virtually at the bottom of foreign aid contributors as a percent of gross national product, its $11-billion-a-year aid program still makes it the world’s largest contributor.

Of that $11 billion, $500 million went to environmental assistance last year, a figure that will increase to $750 million in the coming year.

“I don’t think we have any apologies to make,” Reilly said Thursday, “considering how popular foreign assistance is in our country and in our congress. . . . “

Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland on Wednesday called upon developed countries at the summit to put up $10 billion, and sources said Thursday that Britain and Japan may announce adoption of the the U.N. target of 0.7% of gross national product for foreign aid.

Reilly brushed both aside as unrealistic.

Any chance of the United States increasing its overseas assistance to 0.7% of the GNP, he said, is “totally remote.”

But, he said: “The United States bears a very large, disproportionately large burden for assisting other countries socially, including assisting with the environment. We will continue to bear that burden and we are adding significant resources at this conference.”

The United States’ increased environmental assistance, Reilly has said, should also be viewed as a significant commitment because of the “budget environment” in which it is taking place.

But summit leaders who view the disparity between the world’s rich and poor nations as the ultimate threat to international security pointedly suggest that domestic issues should not be used as an excuse to falter on the environment.