http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/current/politics/stories/un.html (Einblicke ins Internet, 10/1995)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuter) - No U.S. member of Congress, Republican or Democrat, was sighted at the United Nations this week when more than 250 parliamentarians from around the world marked the world body's 50th anniversary.
But their absense at a three-day conference of the 99 year-old Inter-Parliamentary Union, of which the United States is a member, was noted by colleagues, some of them angry, others curious, to meet newly-elected Republican congressmen.
U.S. legislators, organizers say, never said they were boycotting the meeting, which ends on Friday. But they let invitations drift, which to many amounted to the same thing.
``The absense of the United States from a conference held on its own ground sends the wrong signals,'' said Sir Michael Marshall, a British Conservative Party member of parliament and former president of the IPU, which has 135 member states.
``To me it is very sad to see the United States moving away from its leadership role ... and drift towards isolationism.''
The IPU, a network for legislators and not a U.N. body, aims to promote democracy, investigate human rights abuses and hold meetings twice a year to provide members, mainly concerned with domestic legislation, a focus on global issues.
The late U.S. Representative Claude Pepper, a Florida Democrat, attended his first IPU conference in 1938 and led bipartisan delegations in the 1980s. Since then Congress has been less active and some want the U.S. to leave the IPU.
In Washington, there was no comment from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or the House International Relations Committee on Thursday, where staff said spokesmen had taken off for the Labor Day weekend holiday.
One congressional source said the conference was organized well after members had long made plans for their August recess, saying there was ``no conspiracy'' to boycott the meeting.
But Britain's Marshall said the New York event had been planned two years ago and was timed to coincide with the recess after U.S. legislators had argued against holding meetings while Congress was in session.
Dr. Ahmad Fathy Sorour, president of the Egypt's parliament and the IPU, noted Washington's absense in his keynote speech, saying: ``I am sure that I speak for all in saying how sorry we are that representatives of the United States Congress are not able to be with us since their voice would have been heard with particular pleasure and interest.