[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 119 (Friday, July 21, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10481-S10484]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         SUPPORT FOR CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP AGAINST LANDMINES

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, on June 16 I introduced S. 940, the 
Landmine Use Moratorium Act. My bill, which calls for a 1-year 
moratorium on the use of antipersonnel landmines, aims to exert U.S. 
leadership to address a problem that has become a global humanitarian 
catastrophe, the maiming and killing of hundreds of thousands of 
innocent civilians by landmines.
  Landmines are tiny explosives that are concealed beneath the surface 
of the ground. There are 100 million of them in over 60 countries, each 
one waiting to explode from the pressure of a footstep. Millions more 
are manufactured and used each year. The Russians are scattering them 
by air in Chechnya. They are being used by both sides in Bosnia, where 
2 million mines threaten U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian workers 
there, as well as civilians.
  In Angola there are 70,000 amputees, and another 10 million 
unexploded mines threatening the entire population. Mines continue to 
sow terror in dozens of countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and 
the former Soviet Union.
  Again, my bill calls for a 1-year moratorium on the use of 
antipersonnel mines. Not because the United States uses landmines 
against civilian populations the way they are routinely used elsewhere, 
but because without U.S. leadership nothing significant will be done to 
stop it.
  Like the landmine export moratorium that passed the Senate 100 to 0--
2 years ago--and like the nuclear testing moratorium, my bill aims to 
spark international cooperation to stop this carnage. Time and time 
again we have seen how U.S. leadership spurred other countries to act.
  The Landmine Use Moratorium Act has 45 cosponsors--37 Democrats and 8 
Republicans. They are liberals and conservatives. They understand that 
whatever military utility these indiscriminate, inhumane weapons have 
is far outweighed by the immense harm to innocent people they are 
causing around the world.
  Every 22 minutes of every day of every year, someone, usually a 
defenseless civilian, often a child, is horribly mutilated or killed by 
a landmine. It is time to stop this. My bill takes a first step.
  Mr. President, in recent weeks, newspapers around the country have 
published editorials and articles about the landmine scourge and the 
need for leadership by Congress.
  I ask unanimous consent that several newspaper articles about the 
Landmine Use Moratorium Act from Maine, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and 
elsewhere, as well as several defense publications, be printed in the 
Record.
  I also ask unanimous consent that Senator Gorton be added as a 
cosponsor to S. 940.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                 [From Defense News, July 10-16, 1995]

                           Land-Mine Ban Woes

       In 1994, about 100,000 land mines were removed from former 
     war zones at a cost of $70 million. At the same time, another 
     2 million mines were deployed elsewhere.
       These and other sobering, frustrating statistics came out 
     of a three-day international conference in Geneva last week 
     on mine-clearing.
       The daunting prospect of new mines being sown at a rate 20 
     times faster than they can be removed is matched by the 
     apparently futile attempts to ban the sale and manufacture of 
     these inexpensive weapons.
       There is some momentum to enact an international ban, with 
     25 nations adopting moratoriums on mine exports and three--
     Mexico, Sweden and Belgium--calling for comprehensive bans on 
     their sale and manufacture. But in Geneva, it was concluded 
     that banning land mines must be a long-term goal.
       Despite the clear evidence that these weapons often can 
     serve as everlasting and deadly vestiges of wars long 
     resolved, some countries demand the right to keep them in 
     their inventories.
       The nations that want to have land mines in their 
     inventories typically are not the same 64 countries where 
     collectively 100 million land mines kill or maim 500 persons 
     each week. If they were, perhaps a comprehensive ban would 
     not be so elusive.
                                                                    ____


                           Bury Mine Violence

       While international support is growing for a comprehensive 
     ban on the sale and manufacture of antipersonnel mines, 
     Western leaders must speak with one voice in demanding 
     stronger curbs on these weapons that kill about 70 people 
     each day.
       Following the U.S. lead, 18 countries have declared 
     moratoriums on the export of antipersonnel land mines and a 
     U.N. conference beginning in September in Vienna will examine 
     how and where antipersonnel land mines may be used.
       Despite these and other promising signs, a worldwide ban on 
     these mines that kill or maim 26,000 people each year remains 
     an unlikely outcome of the U.N. meeting.
       Even the European Parliament, which is hoping to influence 
     the U.N. decision by soon adopting its own resolution calling 
     for an antipersonnel mine ban, may have trouble achieving 
     consensus.
       While Belgium, for instance, banned all production, sale 
     and export of antipersonnel mines last month, officials from 
     other countries, such as Finland, insist that antipersonnel 
     mines are a vital asset in national defense.
       Because of these widely divergent views, a strong European 
     Parliament resolution renouncing antipersonnel mines may be 
     an elusive goal.
       Even the United States, which had been a leader in the 
     drive to rid the world of antipersonnel land mines, is 
     falling off the pace. Despite a landmark speech by U.S. 
     President Bill Clinton to the U.N. General Assembly in 
     September in which he stressed the elimination of 
     antipersonnel land mines, the government would allow the sale 
     of certain high-tech antipersonnel land mines if the 
     congressionally imposed export ban that ends in 1996 is not 
     extended.
       The U.S. military wants to keep high-tech antipersonnel 
     mines that are self-deactivating. And a multilateral mine 
     control regime being touted by U.S. officials concentrates on 
     eliminating long-lived antipersonnel mines that do not self-
     destruct or self-deactivate.
       While the newer high-tech mines offer great improvements 
     over many of their predecessors, they nonetheless are 
     dangerous 

[[Page S10482]]
     weapons that should be included in a global ban.
       Antitank mines, however, are vital weapons in the modern 
     battlefield and do not cause the civilian casualties that 
     antipersonnel mines do.
       As Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Lane Evans said in a letter 
     to Mr. Clinton after his September speech, ``* * * land mines 
     undoubtedly have some military use, that must be weighed 
     against their advantage as a force multiplier for potential 
     enemies in countries like Somalia or Iraq, where our troops 
     increasingly are being sent.''
       But soldiers are not the most frequent victims of these 
     mines. Civilians, often children, are.
       More mines are being scattered each day in places like 
     Chechnya and the former Yugoslavia. The global landscape 
     already is littered with 85 million to 100 million unexploded 
     antipersonnel mines.
       Western leaders must act now to ensure more of these mines 
     are not sown and that programs are put in place to verify 
     compliance to the ban.
                                                                    ____

                    [From Navy Times, July 24, 1995]

                Sanity May Take Root in Land Mine Debate

                         (By George C. Wilson)

       Far too many of us still see the hurt and disbelief in the 
     eyes of someone who has just been hit by a land mine. The 
     eyes that still bore into my mind are those of a little 
     Vietnamese girl who set off a mine while washing clothes on 
     the bank of the Perfume River in Hue in 1990--a full 15 years 
     after the war was supposed to be over for her and everyone 
     else.
       The girl lay in a hospital bed in Hue with bandages over 
     most of her body. Her mother was attending her because of the 
     shortage of nurses. The mother looked up from her bedside 
     chair and asked me through a translator why the ``booms'' 
     were still going off. Her daughter just stared at me in 
     searing silence.
       I had no answer then, but have something hopeful to say 
     now. The U.S. Senate, perhaps this week but certainly this 
     summer, will confront the scourge that maims or kills 
     somebody in the world every 22 minutes. As many as half of 
     the victims are children like the one I saw in Hue.
       Soldiers know how to detect and disarm mines. Children 
     don't. Sowing mines is like poisoning village wells: The 
     soldiers on both sides realize the danger, drink from their 
     canteens and move on. Not so with the villagers.
       Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., and more than 40 Senate co-
     sponsors have drafted legislation that would declare a one-
     year moratorium on sowing mines on battlefields, starting 
     three years from now. Claymore mines, which infantrymen 
     spread around their positions at night and use in ambushes, 
     would be excluded from the experimental, one-year ban. So 
     would anti-tank mines. Also, international borders, like the 
     demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, could still 
     be sown with mines.
       The Leahy proposal is but a short step toward the goal of 
     inspiring an international agreement to ban land mines the 
     way the nations managed to ban the use of poison gas and dum-
     dum bullets. But it is a symbolic step. It will at least 
     force the Congress, the military and the public to confront 
     this uncontrolled sowing of poison seeds.
       In the Senate, Leahy plans to tack the moratorium 
     legislation onto another bill on the floor, perhaps the 
     defense authorization bill.
       In the House, Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., a Marine grunt from 
     1969 to 1971, is pushing a similar measure but has not 
     decided when to push for a vote. The hawkier House--which 
     seems determined to give the military almost anything it 
     wants--almost certainly will reject the amendment until the 
     Joint Chiefs of Staff say they favor it.
       This hasn't happened despite expert testimony that it would 
     do the U.S. military more good than harm if land mines were 
     banned. No less a soldier than Gen. Alfred Gray Jr., former 
     Marine Corps commandant, has said:
       ``We kill more Americans with our mines than we do anybody 
     else. We never killed many enemy with mines . . . What the 
     hell is the use of sowing all this [airborne scatterable 
     mines] if you're going to move through it next week or next 
     month . . . I'm not aware of any operational advantage from 
     broad deployment of mines.''
       Leahy warns that ``vast areas of many countries have become 
     deathtraps'' because 62 countries have sown between 80 
     million and 110 million land mines on their land. ``Every day 
     70 people are maimed or killed by land mines. Most of them 
     are not combatants. They are civilians going about their 
     daily lives.''
       Yet mines are so cheap--costing as little as $2--that small 
     armies all over the world are turning to them as the poor 
     man's equalizer. American forces increasingly are being sent 
     to these developing areas and would be safer if land mines 
     were banned.
       ``The $2 or $3 anti-personnel mine hidden under a layer of 
     sand or dust can blow the leg off the best-trained, best-
     equipped American soldier,'' Leahy notes.
       At the United Nations last year, President Clinton called 
     on the world to stop using land mines. He could weigh in 
     heavily on the side of the one-year moratorium and push the 
     chiefs in that direction. But don't count on it. He seems 
     determined during his re-election drive not to offend the 
     military and its conservative champions.
       Belgium and Norway this year forbade the production, export 
     or use of land mines. Leahy and Evans hope the upcoming 
     debate will create a climate for a similar stand by the 
     United States. Lest you conclude the land mine moratorium is 
     being pushed by peacenik lawmakers, note that among the 
     senators supporting it are decorated war veterans Daniel K. 
     Inouye, D-Hawaii, J. Robert Kerrey, D-Neb., John F. Kerry, D-
     Mass., and Charles S. Robb, D-Va.
       The case for the Leahy-Evans moratorium is overwhelming. 
     Even so, Congress probably will lose its nerve and refuse to 
     enact the moratorium this year. But I think I could tell that 
     little girl in Hue, if she lived through her maiming, that 
     reason is beginning to assert itself. Man is beginning to see 
     the folly of fouling his own nest with mines. There is at 
     least a dim light at the end of the tunnel.
                                                                    ____

                [From the Washington Post, July 9, 1995]

                          Killers in the Earth

                   (By Anne Goldfeld and Holly Myers)

       Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Rep. Lane Evans of 
     Illinois have just introduced a bill to establish a year-long 
     moratorium on the use of land mines. This legislation is a 
     critical step toward the goal of an eventual international 
     ban on the production, stockpiling, trade and use of these 
     weapons. Passage of this amendment is a humanitarian 
     imperative as, day by day, the public health and 
     environmental crises of land mines spin out of control.
       At as little as $3 apiece, land mines have become the 
     cheapest choice weapon in the civil war conflicts that plague 
     our planet. In the former Yugoslavia alone, as many as 5 
     million land mines have been dug into the earth since the 
     outbreak of fighting. In Rwanda, tens of thousands of mines 
     newly laid in the last year will target the poorest in 
     society--the children and women who must collect firewood or 
     fetch water for survival. As elsewhere, women and children 
     make up 30 percent of land mine victims, and because of their 
     small size, children rarely survive a blast. Tragically, 
     children too frequently perceive land mines to be brightly 
     colored toys.
       Land mines are an epidemic more deadly than the Ebola 
     virus, killing or maiming at least 26,000 people a year, 90 
     percent of whom are noncombatant civilians. However, unlike 
     Ebola, this scourge has spread to nearly every continent on 
     the globe: 10 million land mines in Afghanistan (where the 
     technique of scattering mines from the air was perfected), 10 
     million mines in Angola, 130,000 mines in Nicaragua, 4 
     million mines in Iraqi Kurdistan.
       Mines were laid in the recent Peru-Ecuador border dispute, 
     and new mines are being laid with a ferocity in current hot 
     spots such as Chechnya and Bosnia. The cost of clearing a 
     single mine ranges between $300 and $1,000 and requires a 
     brave man or woman to work on hands and knees, meticulously 
     removing one mine at a time.
       In Cambodia, a country of 8 million people, there are an 
     estimated 8 million land mines. Twenty percent of the land in 
     the country's fertile northwest provinces is now not 
     cultivable because of mines. Approximately one out of every 
     200 people is an amputee, the highest percentage in the 
     world; in the United States the comparable ratio of amputees 
     to the general population is one out of 22,000. At the 
     current rate of clearance, Cambodia will not be free of mines 
     for 300 years.
       According to the U.S. State Department, there are an 
     estimated 100 million land mines in the earth today and at 
     least another 100 million stockpiled in arsenals. Like Ebola 
     between outbreaks, they remain hidden and await their victims 
     patiently for decades. With each passing day, they turn once-
     fertile fields into abandoned wastelands and destroy lives, 
     limbs and futures.
       There is no possible military objective or argument that 
     can justify the human toll and the pollution of the earth 
     exacted by the continued use of land mines.
       Land mines, ``weapons of mass destruction in slow motion,'' 
     have claimed more victims than nuclear, chemical and 
     biological weapons together. The indiscriminate chemical and 
     biological weapons systems are now banned, and land mines 
     must also be banned. President Clinton, at the 50th 
     anniversary of the United Nations, proposed that the 
     elimination of land mines be a common goal of member nations. 
     Let's put this theoretical position into action. Active 
     support of the Leahy-Evans bill represents a crucial start.
                                                                    ____

                 [From the Boston Globe, May 23, 1995]

                        Fields That Keep Killing

       Numbers can be cold abstractions. An account of five 
     minutes in the life of one child at Auschwitz can convey the 
     evil of the Nazi genocide more unforgettably than any 
     quantitative summary of Hitler's mass murder. To understand a 
     contemporary massacre of the innocents that continues day 
     after day, one must feel the horror hidden in the figures on 
     antipersonnel land mines.
       One hundred million is the number of mines waiting to kill, 
     maim or blind a child going to school, a farmer tilling the 
     soil or a refugee returning home. Twenty-six thousand is the 
     number of people who were killed or maimed in the past year 
     by land mines. Seventy is the figure for those who are blown 
     apart each day. Sixty-two is the number of countries where 
     land mines, weapons of mass destruction that kill in slow 
     motion, have 

[[Page S10483]]
     been sown in the soil. Three dollars is the cost for a land mine, the 
     cheapest terror weapon of all.
       The ethical imperative to eliminate land mines is clear. 
     Mines do not discriminate between civilians and combatants. 
     They go on murdering and mutilating innocent victims 
     indefinitely. There are still areas of the Netherlands and 
     Denmark that are off-limits because of unexploded mines from 
     World War II. In countries such as Afghanistan, Cambodia, 
     Angola or Iraq, the diffusion of mines has created permanent 
     killing fields. And Russian planes are currently strewing 
     mines in Chechnya.
       To help end the commerce in land mines, Sen. Patrick Leahy 
     of Vermont is planning to introduce a bill to ban U.S. use of 
     antipersonnel land mines except ``in marked and guarded 
     minefields along internationally recognized national 
     borders.'' To discourage the proliferation of mines, the 
     United States would end all transfers of military equipment 
     to ``any country which the President determines sells, 
     exports or transfers antipersonnel land mines.'' The bill 
     would also authorize $20 million to clear and disarm existing 
     land mines.
       Leahy's bill is necessary because the Pentagon has 
     prevailed on President Clinton to keep using mines that self-
     destruct after a few months or years. That would be a license 
     to prolong mass murder. Leahy has proposed a wise and humane 
     measure that deserves support.
                                                                    ____

                 [From New York Newsday, June 28, 1995]

                       Newlyweds, Killed in Blast

                          (By Michele Salcedo)

       They were newlyweds, celebrating their nine-day-old 
     marriage with a dream honeymoon at a Red Sea resort in Egypt.
       But on Monday the lives of U.S. Army Maj. Brian Horvath, a 
     cardiologist who grew up in Sayville, L.I., and his bride. 
     Maj. Patricia Kopp-Horvath, ended together when the off-road 
     vehicle in which they were touring the Sinai desert hit a 
     landmine.
       An Army spokesman at the Pentagon, Lt. Col. William Harkey, 
     declined to confirm the Horvathe death until a positive 
     identification could be made in six to 10 days.
       But Capt. Dominick Yarrane, commander of the Suffolk County 
     Police Community Response Unit, where Horvath's mother, 
     Arlene, works as an aide, said an Army official from Fort 
     Hamilton notified the Horvath family of the tragedy Monday 
     evening.
       The newlyweds had rented an off-road vehicle, and hired a 
     driver and guide for a tour of the desert territory fought 
     over by Israel and Egypt between 1948 and 1967.
       Horvath and wife, their driver and guide had driven 30 
     miles north of the Red Sea resort of Shaphi al-Sheik, 
     according to Michael Sternberg, the chief representative in 
     Israel of the multinational force in the Sinai, where they 
     struck the mine. The driver and guide survived the blast, but 
     their condition was unclear.
       A source at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo said that the area 
     where the explosion occurred--just north of the Sinai's 
     southern tip--was well-traveled and visited frequently by 
     tourists. It was not in any way restricted, the source said.
       The Egyptian Ministry of the Interior said the area had 
     been mined during 40 years of recurring hostilities, but that 
     efforts had been made to clear it of mines when Israel 
     returned the area to Egypt. American officials in Egypt 
     considered the incident an accident, the U.S. Embassy source 
     said.
       The Horvaths announced their engagement in April and were 
     married June 17 in Stillwater, Minn., near Patricia Kopp's 
     hometown. They were stationed at Landstuhi Regional Army 
     Medical Center in Germany, where Brian Horvath practiced and 
     Patricia Kopp-Harvath worked as a certified registered nurse-
     anesthetist.
                                                                    ____

              [From the Statesman Journal, July 17, 1995]

                      Congress Must Ban Mine Sales

       Judging by the way our lawmakers vote and our citizens act, 
     Oregon is one of the most pro-peace states in the nation.
       It will disappoint Oregonians, then, to learn that the 
     United States is the leading arms exporter in the world, with 
     72.6 percent of the market. It's also disappointing that 
     while a hundred million unexploded land mines spread around 
     the world kill or maim 26,000 innocent people each year, only 
     57 percent of Americans want a moratorium on their export.
       The U.S. Senate is expected to take up this summer both a 
     moratorium on land mines and a ``Code of Conduct,'' pushed by 
     Sen. Mark Hatfield, to restrict the sale of conventional arms 
     to dictators and countries that fail to meet certain 
     humanitarian criteria.
       Of all the measures, elimination of land mines should be 
     the easiest to obtain. The United States imposed a one-year 
     moratorium in 1992 and has extended it every year, President 
     Clinton wants to do the same this year and then move toward 
     elimination--but with a catch. His administration wants 
     countries to use self-destructing land mines as an interim 
     step. Many see this as a self-serving promotion of American-
     made self-destruction mines.
       Except for specific purposes and specific times--along 
     borders in a war--antipersonnel mines have no honest military 
     purpose. Nevertheless, they've been sown like wheat across 
     the countryside in many countries. Innocent children and 
     civilians become their victims.
       Oregonians should be the first to urge Congress to vote the 
     toughest sort of ban on land mines, including the self-
     destruct models.
       Oregonians have supported Hatfield's ``Code of Conduct'' 
     bill in the past and must maintain that support, in hopes 
     that Congress eventually will get the message. His code may 
     be the only way to stop this country from selling arms to 
     nations that may eventually use them against us--Iraq and 
     Somalia are good examples. Besides, we subsidize the sales 
     with U.S. tax dollars and loan guarantees.
       Wars fought with conventional weapons have claimed the 
     lives of 40 million people since World War II. How do U.S. 
     taxpayers feel about their contribution to this slaughter?
                                                                    ____

                [From the Scranton Times, July 10, 1995]

                        Land Mines Plague World


    Specter Should Lead GOP Senators In Effort to Protect Civilians

       Senate Democrats are pressing a bill that would make the 
     United States the leader in a global effort to sharply 
     restrict the distribution and use of land mines.
       According to the State Department, 26,000 civilians around 
     the world are killed or maimed each year by land mines left 
     over from wars. Official estimates of the number of such 
     devices buried on innumerable former battlefields range as 
     high as 100 million.
       No Republicans have signed on as sponsors to the Senate 
     bill, which would extend a moratorium on the use of U.S.-
     produced anti-personnel land mines, expect in certain marked 
     areas where they help to protect borders.
       Such a moratorium would give the U.S. the moral weight 
     needed to lead to a global moratorium on anti-personnel 
     mines, an international conference on which is scheduled to 
     convene in September.
       Civilian populations suffer during wars but should be 
     relieved of such burdens when hostilities cease. The United 
     States should be a leader in protecting, rather than 
     contributing to the endangerment of civilians.
       Sen. Arlen Specter is considered a swing vote on this 
     issue. He should lead his GOP colleagues in helping to stop 
     the carnage caused by land mines.
                                                                    ____

              [From the Bangor Daily News, July 10, 1995]

                          Land-Mine Moratorium

       In 1992, Congress took an intelligent half-step of 
     approving a one-year moratorium on the export of land mines, 
     and subsequently passed an extension. It now has the 
     opportunity to expand the moratorium, saving thousands of 
     lives in the process.
       Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont has proposed a further 
     measure that calls on the president to support international 
     negotiations to eliminate anti-personnel land mines, imposes 
     a one-year moratorium on the use of U.S. land mines except in 
     certain marked areas along international borders and 
     encourages other countries to adopt the moratorium. Passage 
     of the bill could have far-ranging implications. After the 
     '92 moratorium was passed, two dozen other countries enacted 
     similar measures.
       By rough count, there are 1 million land mines currently 
     sown into the earth, awaiting either the costly process of 
     removal (Kuwait has spent $800 million doing this since the 
     end of the Gulf War) or the costlier detonation by an 
     unwilling passerby. Land mines do not know when a war has 
     ended or whether a victim is a soldier or civilian. Their 
     placement in fields once used for planting has the doubly 
     vicious result of causing widespread injury among civilians 
     while discouraging other refugees from returning to their 
     farm lands.
       Land mines are designed to maim instead of kill. They cause 
     disabling injuries, inflict pain and terror among those 
     unfortunate enough in the minelaced regions of Cambodia, 
     Afghanistan, Angola, and a dozen other places. Approximately 
     26,000 people are killed or injured by land mines each year. 
     Once used as a defensive weapon, militaries have found these 
     cheap devices ideal for offensive purposes, as well. Their 
     drain on scarce medical resources means that others suffering 
     from disease or malnutrition will die from want of treatment.
       President Bill Clinton has endorsed the idea of eventual 
     elimination of antipersonnel land mines, but unfortunately 
     also wants to allow a U.S. firm to export a higher-tech 
     version of the weapon, known as a self-destructing land mine. 
     In theory, these land mines either blow up or become inactive 
     after a given time. But allowing one type of land mine opens 
     a loophole for several types, and makes enforcement of a ban 
     on the rest nearly impossible.
       As the world's largest arms exporter, the United States has 
     the special problem of facing potentially hostile countries 
     supplied with U.S.-produced weapons. The land-mine moratorium 
     is an important step toward reducing that eventuality and 
     increasing world safety. Maine's senators should support the 
     Leahy bill.
                                                                    ____

                 [From the Patriot-News, July 19, 1995]

                    Ease the Threat From Land Mines

       The numbers are staggering, so enormous that no one can say 
     with precision just how many unexploded land mines litter the 
     planet.
       In a speech to the United Nations last September, President 
     Clinton cited the figure 85 

[[Page S10484]]
     million. More recently, the State Department has put the number at 100 
     million, or one for every 50 people in the world.
       What is known is that on average about 500 people are 
     killed or maimed each week--26,000 every year--by land mines. 
     Huge swaths of ground have been rendered uninhabitable by the 
     sowing of mine fields, from Kuwait to Angola. One of every 
     236 people in Cambodia is an amputee as a result of mine 
     blasts. Around the world, wherever land mines lie in wait for 
     the unsuspecting or careless, prominent among their victims 
     are children.
       But there is an effort under way to do something about this 
     madness. A one-year moratorium on the sale, export and 
     transfer of land Mines was adopted by the United States in 
     1992, followed the next year by unanimous Senate passage of a 
     three-year extension. The moratorium effort has since been 
     joined by 25 other countries.
       Late next week, the Senate is expected to vote on The 1995 
     Land Mine Use Moratorium Act, which:
       Urges the president to pursue an international agreement 
     for the eventual elimination of anti-personnel land mines.
       Imposes a one-year moratorium on U.S. use of land mines, 
     except in certain marked areas along international borders.
       Encourages additional countries to join the moratorium.
       The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., 
     with 44 co-sponsors representing both parties. Absent from 
     the sponsors list for this wise legislation, which has the 
     active support of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and 
     more than 200 other human rights organizations are the names 
     of Pennsylvania's senators, Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum.
       We urge our two Republican senators to join the effort to 
     end this indiscriminate means of warfare, just as the nations 
     of the world have previously agreed to end the use of 
     biological and chemical weapons. America's leadership and 
     example is no less essential to making this a safer and more 
     peaceful world than it was in winning the Cold War.
                                                                    ____

             [From the Rutland Daily Herald, July 6, 1995]

                             Ban Land Mines

       The world is slowly waking to the indiscriminate carnage 
     that results from the use of a cheap, easily dispersed and 
     deadly weapon--the land mine.
       The question is whether the United States will exercise the 
     leadership required to move the international community 
     toward a total ban of a weapon that kills and maims 26,000 
     people a year.
       There are about 100 million land mines already in place on 
     killing fields around the globe. They create terror on the 
     cheap. They cost between $3 and $20 to make, and 80 percent 
     of those killed are children. Long after the battlefields are 
     quiet in Cambodia, Angola, Lebanon and Vietnam, the killing 
     goes on.
       Land mines are the weapons of cowards. The Soviet Union 
     spread them by the millions in Afghanistan; some were 
     specifically designed to entice children into picking them 
     up. Now Russia is spreading them in Chechnya.
       Sen. Patrick Leahy has played a leading role in prodding 
     the Clinton administration and the international community to 
     bring this hideous technology under control. Legislation 
     introduced by Leahy two years ago led to a moratorium by the 
     United States on the manufacture and sale of land mines and 
     prompted 25 other nations to follow suit. Leahy also 
     introduced a resolution before the U.N. General Assembly on 
     behalf of the United States calling for the ``eventual 
     elimination'' of land mines.
       Now the Clinton administration is backtracking.
       Leahy has introduced a bill that would prohibit the United 
     States from using land mines, except in certain specifically 
     designated border areas, and to impose sanctions on nations 
     who use them. He hopes the United States will lead by 
     example, as it did on the manufacturing moratorium, so other 
     nations also disavow use of land mines.
       The U.S. military, however, is wary of establishing a 
     precedent. Even though land mines are primarily an instrument 
     of terror aimed at innocent civilians, the Army does not like 
     to have its options limited. Certainly, land mines are not 
     the most important weapon in the U.S. arsenal, but the 
     military does not want Congress to get in the habit of 
     indulging its humanitarian impulses by limiting the weapons 
     the Army can use.
       Thus, Clinton has found a way to equivocate.
       Though the United States introduced the U.N. resolution 
     favoring the elimination of land mines, Clinton now favors 
     the export and use of self-destructing land mines that would 
     detonate by themselves over time.
       Here Clinton indulges in fantasy. Does he really believe 
     the dozens of nations with tens of millions of land mines in 
     their possession will decide they would rather buy more 
     expensive self-destructing mines and use them instead? In 
     this way, Clinton undermines the international effort to 
     eliminate the use of this weapon.
       Just four years ago there were only two organizations 
     raising the alarm about land mines. One was the Vietnam 
     Veterans of America Foundation whose land mine campaign is 
     led by Jody Williams of Brattleboro. She had seen what land 
     mines do in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
       Now there are 350 organizations in 20 countries pushing to 
     eliminate the use of land mines. Pope John Paul II, former 
     President Jimmy Carter, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu of South 
     Africa, and U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali all 
     support a ban. And yet Clinton backs away.
       Leahy's bill would put the U.S. once again at the vanguard 
     of the effort to eliminate what Leahy has called ``weapons of 
     mass destruction in slow motion.''
       Leahy's bill has 44 co-sponsors, including Sen. James 
     Jeffords, but he has still not been assured the bill will 
     come to a vote. It ought to come to a vote, and despite 
     Clinton's equivocation, Congress ought to send the message 
     that the United States will lead the way in containing the 
     violence war causes among the world's innocent bystanders.

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, in my ongoing effort to see a worldwide ban 
on the use of antipersonnel landmines, it is interesting to note that 
since starting this effort 25 countries have taken at least the initial 
step by halting all or most of their exports of antipersonnel mines. 
That was due in large part to the action we took here 2 years ago, by 
passing my amendment to stop U.S. exports of these weapons. Our action 
captured the attention of the world, and that is why it is important 
that we continue to show leadership to bring an end to the landmine 
scourge.
  I remind my colleagues that today in over 60 countries there are 100 
million antipersonnel landmines that wait silently to explode. These 
are 100 million not in warehouses but concealed in the ground. In many 
countries they are clearing the landmines an arm and a leg and a life 
at a time.
  Today when wars end, soldiers leave and tanks and artillery and guns 
are withdrawn, in so many countries the killing continues, sometimes 
for months, sometimes long past when people can remember what caused 
the fighting in the first place. It continues because of the landmines 
left behind.
  We are about to make a major decision in Bosnia. The distinguished 
Senator from Kansas and I spent most of an afternoon with the President 
of the United States, with the Secretary of State, Secretary of 
Defense, our Ambassador to the United Nations, and General 
Shalikashvili discussing what alternatives are available to us.
  It was a very good discussion, I think a very important discussion. I 
commend the President for having it. I could not help think throughout 
no matter who is in Bosnia, whether us, for whatever reason, our 
allies, whether now or when the fighting stops, they are going to find 
a very, very grim surprise; that is, hundreds of thousands, perhaps 
over a million landmines that are now in the former Yugoslavia, and 
they will keep on killing long after this dreadful fighting stops.


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