Fifteen members of the US Congress have written a letter to the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to protest that a date for Northern Ireland elections has not been set.
The 15, almost all from districts with large Irish populations, said that the Northern Ireland electorate had been denied their fundamental right to vote when elections were cancelled last May.
They also tell Mr Blair that at their last meeting in Washington with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mr Paul Murphy, they expressed "in the strongest possible terms" their disappointment that the British government had unilaterally postponed the Assembly elections.
They go on to say that the cancellation of the elections sent out a negative message to society that has aspirations of becoming exclusively democratic. "In our opinion, the British Government should set a date for elections as soon as possible," it adds.
The letter is signed by Massachusetts Democrats Richard Neal, Mike Capuano, Bill Delahunt, Martin Meehan, Stephen Lynch and Jim McGovern; New York Democrats Joseph Crowley, Eliot Engel, and Donald Payne; New York Republicans Jim Walsh, John Sweeney and Peter King; New Jersey Republican Chris Smith; West Virginia Democrat, Alan Mollohan and Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle.
The letter welcomes recent statements by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern; US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, Mr Richard Haass; Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams and SDLP leader Mr Mark Durkan, which called for Assembly elections in the autumn.