Political Quotes

“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.”