Excerpts: State Department Briefing Comments on Kyoto Protocol

Following are excerpts from the March 28 State Department press briefing, containing responses of State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher to questions concerning reported Bush administration plans to end U.S. support for the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. The United States signed the protocol in 1997.

Following is the State Department transcript:

Q: Is the State Department moving to take the US signature off the Kyoto agreement, or has it been asked to do that?

MR. BOUCHER: There is, I think, a certain amount of confusion in the air. Let me try to clarify for you. I think we need to stick with the basic facts and not do too much interpretation at this stage because we are looking at the issue of climate change. We are looking at how to go forward with this. And the White House, I think, has made that quite clear in their discussions.

The first thing is well-known. The President, the Administration, clearly opposed the protocol. We have given our reasons for that: it exempts developing countries; we think it might seriously harm the US economy.

At the same time, we are looking at the issue of climate change and how we deal with it. We are not looking at a question of un-signing Kyoto. That is not one of the questions that we are working on in this building.

What we are doing is what the President has said. We are looking with proper focus and working with our friends and allies. We are looking to develop technologies, market incentives and other creative ways to address global climate change. That's what we are doing.

Q: Do you ever get the two-month delay in that meeting, by the way? It's just --

MR. BOUCHER: The meeting, I think, is scheduled at this point for Bonn in the last two weeks of July.

Q: Has there been progress on the Administration's part as far as getting its position for that?

MR. BOUCHER: Well, as I said, we are looking at the policy, we are looking at the issues of climate change, we are doing what the President said. We are looking at technologies, market incentives and other creative ways to address the issue of global climate change. And as we do that, as we elaborate that policy, we will work with our friends and allies and others. Our current plan is to attend that Bonn meeting, so I would expect that we will be working on it before then.

Q: But are you saying that this building was never asked by the White House to look at how basically to go in and erase whoever signed -- whoever's signature is on it?

MR. BOUCHER: What we are working on, what we are doing in this review is ....

Q: No, I'm not asking what you are working on now. I'm asking about -- were you approached, was this building approached and asked to come up with a legal justification as to how or why the US could un-sign the treaty?

MR. BOUCHER: That's not a component of the review. That's not something we have worked on.

Q: No, I know that.

MR. BOUCHER: What I'm trying to say, Matt, is lawyers might have talked about what would be involved, but it's not a focus, it's not a tasking, it's not an issue that is raised in the review that we are working on, that we have been working on. The review is ongoing. We and other agencies are looking at the issue of climate change in the way the President said we were.

Q: Just so -- I just want you to know, the reason I'm asking it that way is because there now seems to be this new way of saying yes. It's a new way of speaking in which you say no, we're not working on it now, but you may have been working on it before and tossed the idea for some reason. So it's --

MR. BOUCHER: No, we have not been working on it before; we're not working on it now.

Q: Okay, thank you.

MR. BOUCHER: And we don't plan on working on it this afternoon.

Q: What about tomorrow?

MR. BOUCHER: Nor tomorrow.

Q: Richard, has there been any reaction as far as you know from other countries hoping to get this ratified, and do you expect that this will hinder the United States in environmental discussions with countries that are in favor of the protocol?

MR. BOUCHER: Obviously we are hearing from a variety of other countries as we have the meetings with European countries, with Japanese and others to discuss these issues. We continue to discuss them with other governments. We are looking, as I said, at the issue of how to address the issue of global climate change. We may not have all the answers yet, but we look forward to working with other governments as we go through this.

On the issue of ratification, I think we have made quite clear we don't look for ratification. I don't think we are at that point yet with this process.

Q: But on what was announced this morning, is it too early to be hearing back, that they hope that the US will change its mind --

MR. BOUCHER: Nothing was announced this morning. Somebody wrote a newspaper story which says we're working on something that we're not working on. That's all that happened. Let's not get too excited. I'm trying to go back to the basic things that are true: that we are opposed to the Kyoto Protocol for reasons that have been well said; we are not working on the issue of un-signing; we are working on the issue of market-driven, technological and creative ways of addressing the issue of global climate change.