With their increasing energy bills and severe economic problems. the bombast and the rhetoric of their representatives and the presumptuousness of the resolution which they forced upon the Conference. could not mask their desperation or the very practical problems they pose for all of the world in the decade ahead. Mr. Speaker. my main interest in attending this Conference was its concern with refugees and my desire to improve the earlier draft resolution from our session in Oslo last spring. I was particularly interested in getting an expression from this Conference condemning the countries who use the refugees or their citizens as instruments of national policy. Fidel Castro. for instance. has forced many of his people to leave his country while declining to accept those who wish to return. a violation of a fundamental principle of international law. I was disappointed. however. that we were able to incorporate only the mildest support language along these lines in the refugee resolution. It is difficult to get the rest of the world interested in the 130.000 refugees who are now in the United States when the last 6 months have seen 1 million refugees leaving Afghanistan with like numbers all over Southeast Asia and Africa. Others view our Cuban refugee problem as ours alone. Mr. Speaker. the five Members of Congress spread our delegation pretty thin and there was little time to assess conditions in East Berlin.
Keywords matched
refugee refugees