ADVISERS APPEAL TO PRESIDENT TO POSTPONE POLLUTION REDUCTIONS.

Byline: John H. Cushman Jr. The New York Times

To the dismay of environmentalists seeking swift action to toughen the international treaty on climate change, President Clinton's senior economic and environmental advisers are urging him to delay for decades the time when the United States and other industrial nations must achieve deep new reductions in the pollution that causes global warming.

Assuming that international negotiations produce such a treaty this year to help control climate change, Clinton's advisers are warning him not to present it for the Senate's approval unless developing countries first agree, in a separate pact negotiated within the next few years, to control their own emission of greenhouse gases.

Their recommendations were described by leaders of several environmental organizations who said they had been briefed on the proposals. White House officials involved in the discussions Thursday refused to discuss their recommendations, which are in an options paper that they expect to give to the president as early as today. The options were pieced together after strenuous debate among the administration's environmental and economic agencies.

Among the staff who put together the policy options are Gene Sperling, the president's economic policy assistant; Kathleen McGinty, the head of the Council on Environmental Quality; Todd Stern, a senior aide who is coordinating the climate policy discussions; and Lawrence Summers, the deputy Treasury secretary.

Outside environmental advocates, including leaders of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Information Center, responded to what they heard by warning the White House that they would actively oppose any agreement along the lines that were being recommended.

``It's clear that the president's men have blinked,'' said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. ``It remains to be seen if the president will blink.''

Phil Clapp, executive director of the Environmental Information Center, said that for President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore to accept long delays after campaigning against global warming for years would ``create severe credibility problems for them on almost any environmental issue.''

On the other hand, powerful industry groups have long urged the Clinton administration to defer action, saying that not enough is yet known about how the climate might change to justify the potential costs in money and jobs that they contend an all-out commitment to reduce emissions would require.

For their part, the president's advisers say they are determined to offer a plan that is realistic politically and economically, not just attractive on the environmental merits.

The most aggressive option before the president would call on industrial nations to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases by 2010, without requiring further reductions. Other options would take even longer to stabilize emissions.

In a treaty signed five years ago in Rio de Janeiro, the United States and other industrial nations said they would try to get emissions reduced, back to the level that existed in 1990, by the year 2000. Most now acknowledge they will not meet that deadline. The United States' emissions are now projected to be 13 percent above 1990 levels by 2000.

Recognizing that the Rio goals were not sufficient to end the rapid accumulation of greenhouse gases that many scientists say threatens to significantly change the Earth's climate in the coming century, the nations that signed that treaty have been trying for two years to negotiate a tougher pact that would set new, binding targets and timetables. The negotiations resume in Bonn on Oct. 20 and are supposed to be completed in Kyoto, Japan, in December.

The recommendations to Clinton come a few days after Japan proposed a schedule that would cut emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. The European nations have called for reductions of 15 percent below 1990 levels by that time, and some nations have sought even deeper emissions.