Posted on: Thursday, September 5, 2002

EDITORIAL
Summit progress isn't much owing to U.S.

It's a shame that a representative of the world's richest and most powerful country had to be greeted with jeers and protests at the United Nations summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg, South Africa. But no one should be surprised.

Secretary of State Colin Powell had the thankless job yesterday of defending the Bush administration's record of unilateralism and foot-dragging in a number of vital international issues.

Most germane to the conference, at which President Bush was conspicuous for his absence among 100 attending heads of state, was the administration's decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol, which many countries view as crucial for reversing — or at least slowing — global warming.

That same protocol now appears poised to come into legal force despite America's refusal to participate, as China and Estonia used the occasion to announce their ratification and Russia and Canada, joining Europe and Japan, both promised to do so soon.

The protocol commits rich countries to reduce emissions that cause global warming. Powell's attempt to defend the indefensible was roundly heckled.

More enlightened governments than our own also had to carry the day on the touchy issue of women's rights and reproductive health. Delegates from Canada and Europe — against the opposition of the United States, the Vatican and conservative Islamic countries — succeeded in adjusting language needed to guarantee women's rights to contraception, safe abortion and other reproductive services.

Though short on ringing declarations, the conference made some important rhetorical progress, such as an agreement to cut in half the number of people with inadequate water and sanitation by 2015. It also confirmed earlier commitments to halve the number of absolute poor, cut illiteracy and cut child mortality.

But Washington's isolation is becoming harder to ignore. For instance, the international governing body of the new International Criminal Court met this Tuesday with the U.S. seat conspicuously empty. In July, the administration illogically cut support for the U.N. Population Fund, which exists to reduce the 70,000 women who die each year from unsafe abortions, and the 585,000 who perish from inadequate healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth.

Also in July, it opposed a plan too strengthen a treaty seeking to end torture, and backed out of talks on biological weapons.

The reaction of the Johannesburg delegates suggests that America is increasingly and unwisely becoming an international loner — at a time when it needs all the friends it can muster.