UNITED NATIONS – In yet another in a series of inexplicable snubs, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon ignored events surrounding the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks last week.

Spending some rare time at home in New York City, the globe-trotting U.N. chief did squeeze in some time to attend a local book party honoring the International Civil Service Commission (a part of the U.N. bureaucracy) and issue a statement hailing ozone preservation.

He did not, however, take time to meet Vice President Joe Biden or Mayor Michael Bloomberg at Ground Zero.

When asked if the U.N. or its secretary-general intended to issue any statement on the 9/11 anniversary, spokeswoman Marie Okabe gave a blunt "no," without explanation.

The latest snub is not the first time the U.N. has been strangely silent over the 9/11 attacks and comes on the more recent heels of a delayed condolence letter belatedly sent to the family of Eunice Kennedy Shriver. It was Mrs. Shriver who was the moving force behind the creation and growth of the Special Olympics, one of the world's premiere international sporting events for handicapped athletes.

The letter, which took six days to send, arrived two days after the noted philanthropist's burial. The Kennedy matriarch died on Aug. 11.

The U.N. offered no explanation for the apparent slight to Shriver.

Ban, however, was quick to send condolences following Sen. Edward Kennedy's death on Aug. 25.

The latest U.N. gaffe on 9/11 remembrances illustrates a curious detachment the world organization has taken with regard to the terrorist attack.

In September 2001, it took U.N. chief Kofi Annan almost a week to issue a statement on the attack, despite the fact the incident happened only a few miles away from the U.N. headquarters.

Many inside the U.N. Secretariat tower could see the attack in progress, though initially the world body was eerily silent.

While President George W. Bush and many world leaders paid their respects at Ground Zero within a few weeks of the event, the U.N. Security Council, furthermore, took better than three months to travel the five miles to the site of the attack.

Every year, the United Nations remembers the dead from the U.S. WW II atomic attack on Hiroshima and the U.N. fallen from the 2003 attack on its Baghdad headquarters. Yet the same organization goes silent when it comes to remembering those 3,000 who perished in New York City, the Pentagon and the fields of Pennsylvania.

Neither the secretary-general nor US/UN Ambassador Susan Rice were reachable for comment.

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