Washington

The future leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is up in the air this week, after the United States failed to renominate Robert Watson, the panel's current chair.

Watson's six-year term as chair of the panel, which was set up by the United Nations in 1988 to establish an international consensus on climate-change research, ends this year. The panel's Geneva-based secretariat had asked member nations to put forward their nominations for the position by 15 March.

India's nomination of Rajendra Pachauri, director of the Tata Energy Research Institute in New Delhi and current vice-chair of the panel, was the only one to arrive by the deadline, secretariat officials say. Pachauri is a former adviser to the World Bank and a director of the Indian Oil Corporation.

Watson, an ecologist who is chief scientist at the World Bank, says that he would be willing to serve a second term as chair and that he still hopes the United States will support his re-election. Watson was nominated by the United States when he was elected in 1996, but observers say that his former role as associate director for environment at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Bill Clinton, and his closeness to environmental advocacy groups, may dissuade the Bush administration from nominating him this time round.

Renate Christ, deputy secretary of the secretariat, says that there is no clear procedure for how nominations should be made, and that the secretariat may continue to accept nominations up until the election of the chair in April. She also points out that Bert Bolin, the Swedish meteorologist who preceded Watson as chair, was re-elected for his second term without being renominated.

The panel's governing body will vote on the position when it meets in Geneva in April. It is unclear how member states would vote if both Watson and Pachauri stand. Christ says that several countries have expressed a desire for Watson to stay on. But some nations may feel that it is time for a representative of a developing nation to head the panel.

Whoever is elected will have to oversee the panel's fourth climate-change assessment, which is due to be completed over the next five to seven years.

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