I spoke today to a staff member of the Cabinet of Minister Deleuze, Belgian 
Federal Minister for Energy and Sustainable Development.  As you will know, 
Minister Deleuze will be chair of the EU Environment Ministers as of July 
when Belgium takes over the rotating Presidency of the EU.  Thus he is 
presently intimately concerned with EU follow up to Kyoto.

The Cabinet of Deleuze is taking very seriously reports that Bush will table 
a series of initiatives at the Bonn COP VI meeting, which are designed to get 
the US time to consider a comprehensive new approach to climate change issues 
and will finally ditch consideration of Kyoto (by others). The EU (in my 
opinion) would seek to counter any such 'wrecking tactics' by increasing the 
pressure on the US in the interim (though the sensible political response, 
tabling EU suggestions that the US would have to reject, seems to have eluded 
the EU till now).

The end point of any such plan by Bush would be a US emphasis on trade/market 
based mechanisms, no multilateral approach but bilateral deals, and 
technology transfer.

(If we have any messages on this issue for the EU, this contact would be a 
good input point.)

Incidentally, in Brussels today, Thomas Brewer of the Jorunal of 
International Business Studies, gave a very persuasive account of why the 
Republican leadership is out of touch even with its rank and file membership 
on environmental issues.  He used polling data to indicate this, and the 
suggested conclusion, that Bush will now have to move  'constructively' on 
the issue, was well argued.

Lastly, do we have a contact in Washington who could comment on this?

Brendan Devlin