Kent Conrad: “Mr. President, today we have asked the President of the United States to intervene to bring the parties back to work at…”

“Mr. President, today we have asked the President of the United States to intervene to bring the parties back to work at Northwest Airlines, to get the planes flying, and to do it before Labor Day. We had hoped that the two parties would reach agreement on their own. This is a dispute between private parties, but it has a distinctly public result, because all jet service is shut off from North Dakota. We had asked the Secretary of Transportation to bring the two sides back together. He did that yesterday. I have now had a chance to talk to the Secretary at some length. I have had a chance to talk to the two sides, and it is very clear to me, although the Secretary, I think, did the very best job possible in the circumstances, that the two sides have not resumed negotiations today, and they have no plan to resume negotiations tomorrow. In fact, they have no plan to get back together until Saturday. That is too long. That is unacceptable. We need the two parties to resolve this matter and to do it promptly so that the public trust can be restored, so the public can move, so the blood supply that comes into the biggest hospital in our State can move, can be supplied, so that key parts that are needed for important plants in North Dakota can come in by air, and so that our own traveling public can move. It is not too much to ask these parties to immediately go back to the table and to resolve their differences.”