By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a historic joint meeting with its Mexican counterpart during a three-day visit to Mexico in two weeks, Chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., announced yesterday.
"It's another historic first," Helms told a committee meeting, saying the gesture "will help solidify the emerging friendship between our two governments, and will contribute to strengthening the long-standing friendship between our two peoples."
The visit is to start April 16.
Helms said he saw it as a fitting follow-on to last year's visit to the United Nations, when "I had the privilege of becoming the first legislator ever to address the U.N. Security Council." U.N. officials met with the committee in Washington afterward, and the longtime ardent foe of the United Nations eventually agreed to a deal under which the United States would pay its unpaid dues.
"All in all, it was a pretty good strike by the committee," he said.
The Mexico trip, he said, "will be, to the best of our knowledge, the first time in history that a committee of the U.S. Congress has held a joint meeting on foreign soil with a committee of another nation's congress or parliament," Helms said.
