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WASHINGTON — The Bush administration rejects the Kyoto global warming treaty “under any circumstances” and sees little chance that new talks this summer will produce a suitable substitute, a State Department memo says. 

Despite comments by a top U.N. official that the administration might be shifting its position, the cable to diplomatic and consular posts also said negotiations to ratify the 1997 treaty do not appear to be leading to agreement. 

“Certainly not as early as the July meeting in Bonn,” said the cable, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. The cable was sent April 1, three days after President Bush announced his rejection of the treaty, and offers “talking points” for diplomats to explain the administration’s position. 

A State Department official had no comment Friday. 

The cable drew strong criticism from environmental groups. Some said the document shows the administration’s negative policies are based on ideology, not science as Bush contended. 

“It is shocking to see in black and white that the administration has no basis for its policy beyond rhetoric and ideology,” said Natural Resources Defense Council senior scientist Daniel Lashof. “The Bush administration has turned the United States into a rogue nation by rejecting the treaty.” 

The climate treaty reached Kyoto, Japan, in 1977 aims to reduce levels of “greenhouse gases,” which many scientists think are causing Earth to get warmer with potentially disastrous consequences. The pact sets goal for industrialized countries to cut heat-trapping emissions by 2012 an average 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. 

On March 28, Bush sparked an international outcry when he said the treaty was unworkable and discriminates against the United States, and he would not submit it to the Senate for ratification. He also reversed a campaign promise to treat carbon dioxide from power plants, a major target of the treaty, as a pollutant and a source of global warming. 

“Does the United States oppose the Kyoto protocol under any circumstance?” the State Department “talking points” document asked. “Yes, we oppose the Kyoto protocol because it exempts many countries from compliance and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy.” 

On Wednesday, however, Dutch Environmental Minister Jan Pronk told reporters in Washington the administration appeared to have toned down its criticism and no longer insists the Kyoto treaty is dead. Pronk chairs the U.N. agency trying to put the global warming treaty in force. 

“I don’t hear it anymore. I think it was a premature statement,” Pronk said after meeting with administration officials. 

Much of his analysis was based on the assurance from administration officials this week that the United States would have its own plan to combat global warming before the talks are reopened in July in Bonn, Germany. 

Pronk said he has proposals of his own to address the American objections and plans to discuss them Saturday at a meeting in New York with officials from 30 to 40 industrialized countries. 

A Bush administration official denied on Friday that the United States has a timetable for concluding a review of climate change being done by Vice President Dick Cheney, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman and the secretaries of the Treasury, State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Energy departments. 

No industrial country has ratified that treaty. An effort at The Hague, Netherlands, to come up with a plan last November for implementing the accord collapsed in a disagreement between the United States and Germany over trading pollution credits. 

“Given the long list of outstanding, difficult issues, and the fact that few, if any, parties were engaging in any reassessment of their positions after the Hague, there seems little likelihood they could all be resolved in two weeks of negotiations in July,” the State Department memo said. 

In rejecting the treaty, Bush insisted developing nations must be included in its mandatory cuts on carbon dioxide emissions. Negotiators in Kyoto specified that because major industrialized countries are the worst polluters, they should be assigned most of the emission cutbacks. 

In the United States, carbon dioxide emissions have continued to grow since the treaty was signed. They are now almost 15 percent above the levels of 1990. 

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On the Net: EPA global warming site: http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming