Overnight discussion at the World Summit on a plan for tackling poverty and protecting the environment turned heated when the European Union proposed taking the contentious issues out of the hands of negotiators and sending them to top ministers to decide. Summit host South Africa said it was looking at the suggestion to send 14 issues, including new sanitation goals and anti-corruption measures, and would respond later.

The United States has refused to agree to specific target dates for new goals, such as halving the number of people in the world without access to sanitation by 2015, saying that concrete results on the ground were more important than words on paper.

The European Union and the developing world have demanded that the summit's final documents include specific goals.

"We have already said all along that this summit must be a summit of actions, not a summit of talk," said Danish Environment Minister Hans Schmidt. "We decided to shake the tree to give the negotiations more momentum."

The 10-day summit has been focusing on ways to get water, sanitation and health care to the world's poorest while protecting the environment. About 1.2 billion people lack clean drinking water and 2 billion are without sanitation, with an estimated dlrs 180 billion needed each year to tackle water problems.

More than 190 countries were represented at the meeting and more than 100 world leaders were expected to arrive in the final days.

On Thursday, nearly a dozen U.S. officials worked to counter their battered image at the summit, playing up the U.S. role as the world's largest foreign aid donor.

"No nation has made a greater contribution and a more concrete commitment to sustainable development," said Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, leader of the U.S. delegation.

U.S. officials laid out a series of partnerships with industry and private foundations in what they described as a "new approach to development" to address the developing world's most pressing problems, including energy, hunger, water, AIDS and forest management.

The United States' critics say it still needs to do more to help developing countries if it wants to stem political extremism.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio, said the United States must cooperate with other countries. Otherwise, he said, it will "create great pain for our citizens and for citizens throughout the world by refusing to recognize our responsibilities."

Meanwhile, UNICEF head Carol Bellamy appealed to delegates to work to save the lives of the 11 million children under the age of 5 who die each year of easily preventable diseases, such as diarrhea.

"These deaths are not only a tragedy for children and families — they are a blow to development, because they deprive communities and society as a whole of incalculable human potential," she said in a plenary session.

Bellamy asked the summit to commit to providing clean drinking water and sanitation to every primary school in the world.

"Something as simple as providing safe water and clean toilets in schools will not just help protect children from deadly diseases, it will keep millions of them, especially girls, going to school," she said. "And making sure children get a quality basic education can help a single generation make a huge leap."

PHOTO CAPTION

Tablets of the AIDS medicine Stavudine are seen at Aspen Pharmaceutical Research Laboratories, which produce generic drugs, in Port Elizabeth, South Africa Thursday Aug. 29, 2002. The World Summit for Sustainable Development is being held in South Africa through Sept. 4, and one of the topics discussed will be how to bring cheap AIDS medicine to the world's poor. (AP Photo/John MCco