Jesse Helms

Re “Helms Warns He’ll Stall Foreign Policy Legislation,” Feb. 11: How is it that Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) continues to get away with hamstringing the efforts of the secretary of State to negotiate peace in the Middle East and nullifying years of U.S. leadership in the United Nations but rates no better than a Page 14 story in The Times? The president’s sex life has captured front-page attention for three weeks now and I fail to understand how an $18-billion unpaid bill to the U.N., caused by the narrow, and largely unsupported, religious fanaticism of one senator, cannot get at least a day’s worth of priority. Planned parenthood, including the right to terminate a pregnancy, is legal in this country and should not be an issue upon which U.N. funds should be withheld from other nations.

It seems to me that the real scandal in this country is the stranglehold that the conservative right has succeeded in affixing on American public policy.

The actions of Helms and the lack of moderating intervention on the part of the GOP and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), in particular, are serious enough to warrant recrimination and calls for sanction against Helms, but that is hardly the case.

Helms’ personal religious beliefs should, indeed, be personal and off the table when it comes to his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If the senator cannot conduct himself as a statesman in a sophisticated and diverse society that recognizes a multiplicity of philosophical viewpoints, then it is about time that the American public, and especially the Fourth Estate, call him out.

GLORIA J. RICHARDS

Simi Valley

* Helms threatens the IMF, the world’s economic requirements, and the entire U.N. organization simply because he and a handful of nut cases want to prevent the possibility of abortions in other countries. His word is his bond--whenever he chooses. His paranoia has degenerated into utter craziness. Kenneth Starr should start investigating what good old Jesse is taking in his morning pills.

MERLE HORWITZ

Los Angeles