[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 83 (Monday, June 16, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S5689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  THE LANDMINE ELIMINATION ACT OF 1977

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, last Thursday, 55 of us joined Senators 
Leahy of Vermont and Hagel of Nebraska in cosponsoring the Landmine 
Elimination Act of 1977. This landmark legislation will bar, as of 
January 1, 2000, the use of any U.S. funds for new deployments of 
antipersonnel landmines.
  I am proud to be one of the cosponsors of this legislation, which 
addresses a subject of terrible urgency. Every hour, more innocent 
civilians are killed or wounded by landmines in Angola, Afghanistan, 
Bosnia, Cambodia, Ecuador, and elsewhere. The scourge of landmines is 
so great that the United States and other governments have special aid 
programs to help locate and destroy landmines left over from the wars 
of the past.
  The United States is pursuing many avenues to battle this plague. We 
are a signatory of the antipersonnel landmine protocol to the 
Convention on Conventional Weapons, which I would hope the Senate will 
give its advice and consent to ratification of that protocol sometime 
this year. That protocol bans undetectable mines, such as the toy-like 
plastic butterfly mines that maim so many children. The United States 
is well on its way toward converting all its nondetectable mines, so 
there will be very few costs associated with ratification of this 
protocol.
  We are also engaged in negotiations in Geneva and working with the 
Government of Canada on the projected Ottawa convention in hopes of 
obtaining a worldwide ban on antipersonnel landmines. But those 
negotiations have left the United States in a quandary. Russia and 
China--the world's major suppliers of antipersonnel landmines--have 
refused to participate in the Ottawa process to achieve an immediate 
ban on these mines. And Mexico has blocked the U.N. Conference on 
Disarmament from opening the formal negotiations in which Russia and 
China are willing to participate.
  Nobody is clear on whether Mexico's step reflects frustration with 
the idea of gradualism in eliminating antipersonnel landmines, or a 
desire to continue using such mines in Mexico's own war against the 
domestic guerrilla movements. What is clear, however, is that bold 
steps are needed to regain momentum in the crusade to end this most 
horrendous aspect of modern warfare.
  Two years ago, two-thirds of this body voted for a moratorium on new 
antipersonnel landmine deployments, beginning in February 1999. The 
Landmine Elimination Act of 1977 will go a giant step further, by 
committing the United States to just say no to these mines on January 
1, 2000. This action will put the United States on a higher moral plane 
than ever before on this issue. With a legally binding commitment to 
end our own role in sowing needless destruction, perhaps we can more 
effectively influence Russia and China and Mexico to step up to the 
responsibility of protecting the innocents even when we make war on our 
enemies.
  S. 896 is a carefully constructed bill, Mr. President, and that is a 
sign of the seriousness with which this body approaches the topic of 
landmines. Subsection 2(d) of the bill permits the President to delay 
application of the ban with respect to the Korean peninsula on a yearly 
basis if he determines that new deployments would be indispensable to 
the defense of the Republic of Korea if war should occur there. This is 
a broader exemption than that in the moratorium we passed 2 years ago, 
which allows such mining only along international borders and in the 
DMZ. Given the risk that a dying Stalinist regime in North Korea might 
throw all its forces into a last-gasp effort to conquer the South, this 
broader exemption is sensible indeed.
  S. 896 also is clearly limited to the most heinous landmines: Mines 
delivered by artillery, rocket, mortar, or similar means, or dropped 
from an aircraft. The bill goes to state, at subsection 4(b): ``The 
term `anti-personnel landmines' does not include command-detonated 
Claymore munitions.''
  Command-detonated landmines do not cause the many civilian casualties 
that have prompted work action. They are generally set off either by a 
nearby soldier, who waits for the enemy to approach, or by a tripwire 
in an ambush. They are used often to blow up tanks, and do not leave 
the indiscriminate killing fields that so plague farmers and travelers 
and children today.
  Nobody is comfortable manufacturing any instrument of death. But at 
least Claymore munitions are targeted munitions, designed to kill the 
enemy rather than his neighbors and his children.
  The care with which S. 896 has been drafted makes this a bill that 
all of us can support. I am happy to cosponsor it and I am confident 
that it will be enacted into law.

                          ____________________