U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

Bush Nominates Leahy

To U.S. Congressional Delegation

To The United Nations

WASHINGTON (Tuesday, Sept. 14) -- President Bush Monday nominated Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) to be a Representative of the United States to the 59^th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.  Also nominated with Leahy as a Congressional Delegate to the UN was Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.).   

Leahy, the ranking member of the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, has long been a leader in the U.S. Senate on human rights and foreign policy issues.

Leahy and Sununu will consult leaders of the U.S. delegation in assisting with U.S. priorities before the United Nations, such as the crisis in the Sudan.  

Leahy served once before on the Congressional Delegation to the United Nations, appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, when Leahy worked to help lay the groundwork for the eventual international treaty to ban the production, use and export of anti-personnel landmines.  Leahy has been the leading U.S. official in the anti-landmine cause and said Monday he will continue that effort in his new work with the U.S. delegation.  Leahy said he also wants to find ways to help in setting up a permanent relief effort through the United Nations to assist civilian victims of war – another longtime area of his efforts in Congress, and now also a new initiative under consideration by the United Nations.  He is the author of a USAID program that aids war victims, which his Senate colleagues later named the Leahy War Victims Fund. 

“This is a crucial time both for the United States and for the United Nations,” said Leahy.  “No single nation or entity can possibly solve all of the many dangers that the world now faces, which include terrorism, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, the global AIDS crisis and the scourge of landmines.  We need the United Nations to succeed, and we need to be constructive in our relationship with the UN.  I feel strongly about the dangers of the rift that has opened between us and the rest of the world, and I felt I should match that concern with my own direct participation.” 

The U.S. Congressional Delegation to the UN includes one member of each party.  Membership rotates between the Senate and the House.  The General Assembly’s session opens in late September and runs until next April.

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