Bush, EU Chiefs Play Down Rift on Climate Pact

President Bush and European Union leaders on Thursday stressed cooperation on the issues of trade and AIDS and downplayed their sharp differences over global warming by announcing collaborative research into the climate phenomenon.

“The values and the goals we share are durable and they’re healthy and they’re great goals,” Bush declared at an EU gathering here.

But the vast, transatlantic differences over climate change could not be papered over despite what Bush called “a spirit of cooperation” on the issue.

After a closed-door meeting, the first between Bush and the 15 EU leaders, European Commission President Romano Prodi announced that EU member nations will soon begin a concerted drive to ratify the 1997 Kyoto treaty, an international pact to combat global warming that Bush has unilaterally rejected.

“The European Union will stick to the Kyoto Protocol [reached in Japan] and go for a ratification process,” Prodi said during a news conference with Bush. “So we agreed to disagree about substance, but agreed to go on with some type of procedure that can lead us back to a position that we can cooperate and try to support each other.”

Bush reiterated his opposition to the treaty but vowed to reduce “greenhouse” gases.

“I understand the concerns of people in Europe,” he said. “People in our nation care about global warming and greenhouse emissions as well.”

As Bush’s words suggested, the president is striving mightily--during what is his highest-profile and most politically charged appearance on the world stage so far--to overcome his image in Europe as a man with a tendency to go it alone on such issues as missile defense and global warming.

Repeatedly, Bush--the first sitting U.S. president to visit Sweden--struck an internationalist tone.

“I am concerned about isolationism and protectionism--not only amongst some voices in Europe but also in my own country. And I think that we’ve got to do everything we can to unite to promote free trade, not only free trade for the benefit of our own people but free trade for the benefit of developing nations as well,” Bush said at the news conference.

“My trip here was to send that signal as loud as I can that we will remain engaged with the EU and with NATO,” he added.

Near the site of the EU summit, meanwhile, thousands of protesters gathered. Some hurled stones and bottles at police who surrounded a school where activists had assembled to show their displeasure over globalization and U.S. policies.

Bush will visit Poland today, where he intends to honor the heroes of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazis and to deliver the major address of his weeklong European trip. Bush told reporters that he will describe his vision of a larger European community that embraces nations that are not yet members of the EU or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

On Saturday, Bush is to meet Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Slovenia. Bush said he intends to assure Putin that “Russia is not the enemy of the United States [and] . . . the Cold War is over.”

The eagerness of EU officials here to trumpet the good exchanges they had with Bush on everything but the Kyoto accord served to spotlight the utter failure of the two sides to make progress on the most divisive issue of the gathering.

But EU leaders were hardly surprised by the impasse. Based on Bush’s long-standing objections to the 1997 treaty, Deputy Foreign Minister Lars Danielssen of Sweden said, no one expected Bush to suddenly “move away from the substance of that position.”

In what he cited as a sign of progress, Prodi disclosed an apparent Bush commitment to send a monitoring delegation to Bonn next month for a United Nations conference on climate change.

Bush also said the U.S. and EU will “intensify cooperation on science and on technology” to research the causes of and ways to control global warming, although neither side specified what form that cooperation might take.

On other issues, Bush and his EU counterparts discussed how the EU can increase its involvement in combating acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and the launching in November of a new effort to liberalize global trade.

In a joint five-page Goteborg Statement, participants formally endorsed the EU’s plan to create its own rapid-deployment force of about 60,000 troops to deal with international crises. The Bush administration was initially wary of the plan, but the statement says the U.S. now welcomes efforts to enhance Europe’s ability to meet the challenges of civilian and military crises.

The statement stipulates, however, that the EU force will either operate where NATO is not engaged or in full cooperation with the U.S.-led alliance when its interests are involved--provisions designed to address the concerns of Washington and other non-EU members of NATO, notably Turkey.

On other issues, the U.S. and Europe pledged to work with Russia on a dialogue that is constructive but frank. The statement notes recent “adverse developments” affecting the Russian media, which it says should be “independent and free of interference.”

The statement also calls on Moscow to pursue a political settlement in Chechnya, where Russian troops are battling separatist rebels.

Chris Patten, the EU chief for external affairs, lauded the talks with Bush for the unity displayed in joint U.S.-European efforts to bring peace to the Balkans and the Middle East.

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Times staff writer Carol J. Williams contributed to this report.

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