Bill Clinton: “Well, let me, first of all, answer an earlier question you made. You made a lot of points about education in your…”

“Well, let me, first of all, answer an earlier question you made. You made a lot of points about education in your earlier remarks, and we have announced a new initiative there. And I hope that--let me follow up on that just to say I hope you will think of other specific things we can do in that regard. On the children's convention, the Senate of the United States has not ratified that because of a concern about one particular provision in it and how it relates to the sovereignty of our States in the United States. But we fully support its objectives and always have. On the landmine issue, I don't know about the '77 convention. I can tell you that we, the United States, spend more than half of the money the whole world spends to take landmines out of the ground. We have already destroyed 1\1/2\ million of our own landmines, and we are in the process of destroying our whole supply--with the single exception of those that are in a very carefully marked plot of land in Korea, at the border of North and South Korea. We leave them there-- first of all, they're not near any residential area; they're not near any children; and the area where they are is heavily marked with warning; and no civilian has ever been hurt there--because the North Korean Army has vastly larger forces on the border of South Korea than the South Koreans and the Americans have facing them. And it's only about 18 miles from the border of North Korea to Seoul, the largest city in South Korea. And the landmines are thought to be the only presently available deterrent should an invasion occur, and no invasion has occurred. We are there pursuant to the United Nations resolution of the conflict between North and South Korea. I think there is some encouragement that that may be resolved, that the final peace may be made. And when that happens, then the last remaining landmine issue will be resolved. In the meanwhile, we will continue to do everything we can to end the problem of landmines for people everywhere. We will continue to spend the money that we're spending, to use the people that we're using--we, actually not very long ago, lost a crew of our Air Force--you may remember--in a tragic accident off the coast of Africa when they just deposited some American forces to take landmines up in southwest Africa. It was an airline accident, but they were there to deal with the landmine issue. It is a very, very important thing to me, personally, and to our country. And we are trying to increase the number of people trained to take the mines up, and also increase the amount of equipment available. And interestingly enough, for the first time ever, our Defense Department has just recently purchased a machine made in South Africa that aids in the extraction of landmines from the ground. So we are working very, very hard on that. [A participant commended the President for listening to Africans instead of telling them what to do, and encouraged him to support reconciliation through local and regional African mechanisms.]”