1.   Political leaders have reached a tentative agreement to hold a preparatory conference next month.

2.   The final UNCED preparatory conference ended in early April after five weeks of negotiations in New York, with little firm agreement.

3.   But three reservations, some of them apparently dictated by politics and the preferences of the Pentagon, have crystallized in several years of preparatory conferences.

4.   Five regional preparatory conferences all produced documents that reflected the problems and conditions of women and incorporated proposals to eliminate discrimination and violence against women.

5.   Next September, the United Nations will convene a special General Assembly session on children, following a year of preparatory conferences.

6.   The first sign of problems with renewal came in January, when several important nonnuclear nations raised their objections during a preparatory conference in New York.

7.   Pinguelli Rosa made his remarks at the opening of a preparatory conference for the United Nations-sponsored global environmental summit to be held in Johannesburg in September.

8.   A European Union diplomat said the African delegates had come to the conference with a far harder line on the issues than they had taken at the preparatory conferences.

9.   Emil Salim, who chaired the preparatory conference in Bali, Indonesia, said the Johannesburg summit would now be more difficult.

10.   Many delegates said they were optimistic that a consensus would be reached during the second and final week of the preparatory conference.