Patrick Leahy: “for those who are planning schedules, I do not expect to take long, but I will speak about an issue that I have talked…”

“for those who are planning schedules, I do not expect to take long, but I will speak about an issue that I have talked about many times, the issue of landmines, something, I must admit, I think about in waking hours and sometimes in my dreams. There was an ad in yesterday's Roll Call newspaper. It said: There's just one problem with President Clinton's ``landmine ban.'' . . . It doesn't ban landmines. An ad in the Hill newspaper 2 days ago asked the question: Would a landmine by any other name be as deadly? That may seem like a strange question because the answer is so obvious. Landmines are those tiny hidden explosives that kill and maim randomly. They are strewn by the thousands, by the tens of millions, in over 100 million in over 60 countries. They do things like what is shown in this photograph. They do it to children in as many foreign countries as there are States in the United States. That was a healthy young child walking down a road. That child in a single instant was maimed, crippled for the rest of his life, if he survives the surgery he will have to undergo. If he survives, he will grow up in a poor country with one arm, one leg and somehow be expected to make a living. Imagine if something like this was happening in the United States. We would call it terrorism. We would make it a Federal crime. We would do everything possible to stop it.…”