RJR Nabisco chief executive officer Steven Goldstone said bluntly that he has "no hope" for a comprehensive tobacco settlement this year. "The extraordinary settlement, reached on June 20 last year, that could have set the nation on a dramatically new and constructive direction regarding tobacco, is dead," Goldstone said in a speech at the National Press Club.

"There is no process which is even remotely likely to lead to an acceptable, comprehensive solution this year," he said, adding that the company would have to fight its critics in court and continue advertising and marketing its brands, "competing for the business of adult consumers."

Other big cigarette makers swiftly endorsed Goldstone's view, the most strident so far against efforts in Congress to craft atobacco bill.

Investors were buoyed by the companies' comments and tobacco stocks rose on Wall Street.

But the White House and members of Congress from both parties said they were undeterred by industry threats. "We are going to get this done, " Clinton said. "They can be part of it or they can fight it. "I am determined to do something about this and I cannot believe that Congress will have a favorable reaction to the announcement today," he said.

The Senate is tentatively slated to take up a $500 billion tobacco bill in late May. The industry says that measure goes much further than the $368.5 billion proposed settlement it reached last June 20 with 40 states suing it.The industry wanted the settlement to be the basis of congressional action, and said it would stand by that agreement even though it was no longer viable in Congress.

But numerous law-makers in both parties as well as public health officials said Congress did not need the industry's blessing to write a tobacco bill."The public demandsaction, and with or without the industry's support, Congress must pass a bill" to fight teen-age smoking, said Arizona Republican John McCain, the chief author of the Senate bill. The House has not yet produced a bill, and some industry critics fear it may be easier for cigarette makers and lawmakers from tobacco-growing states to derail legislation in the House than in the Senate.

But House commerce chairman Thomas Bliley, a Virginia Republican who will play a central role in drafting any House bill, said the industry's lack of cooperation was "not a reason for inaction." He said he hoped "Congress will ultimately agree on a tough bipartisan plan to reduce teen smoking."

Anti-smoking advocates David Kessler, the former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, and C Everett Koop, the former US Surgeon General said in a joint statement that the goal was not a "deal" with the industry but Congress "reining in a rogue industry."