Patrick Leahy is a leader in the international campaign against the production, use, and export of anti-personnel landmines. As a U.S. delegate to the United Nations in 1994, he introduced in the U.N. General Assembly a U.S. resolution calling for the eventual elimination of landmines; the measure was unanimously adopted. The senator says he applauds President Clinton's "desire to see us rid the world of landmines," but he believes that the Ottawa negotiating process will be a better, faster means of achieving that goal than will the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament. He was interviewed by Co-Managing Editor Jacqui Porth.

Question: Why have landmines been particularly singled out as being a serious arms control issue?

Leahy: Today, it is estimated that there are already as many as 100 million landmines in the ground in 65 to 70 countries. These mines maim or kill some 25,000 people every year, predominantly civilians. I had a Cambodian sit in my office in Vermont and tell me that in his country they are clearing landmines an arm and a leg at a time.

It is a serious issue. Once a war has ended, and one side wins or a peace agreement is signed, the armies march away, the tanks roll away, the guns are unloaded, but the landmines stay. And 10 years later farmers still can't go into their fields, children still can't walk down a road to school, animals can't go to the watering hole, and large areas of the country are uninhabitable and unusable because the landmines are still there -- oftentimes in places where no one can remember who put them down or which side did it.

Question: In January, President Clinton urged the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva to negotiate, as soon as possible, a global, comprehensive ban on landmines. Do you view this as important and why?

Leahy: I think what the president has called for, a global ban, is important, but I think the CD is not where it's going to happen. It is a very comfortable place to negotiate. They can go on for years. They haven't even agreed to a format of negotiations yet. As a practical matter, any one country can veto anything the CD attempts to do because it is supposed to be a case where either everybody agrees or nobody agrees.

I've often said that if you really want to negotiate a landmine agreement, take a table and put it out in a field in sub-Saharan Africa or Cambodia or some country heavily laid with landmines and tell the negotiators that they are going to have to work their way up to the table in the middle of the field. And, if they don't agree to a total ban on the first day, the table will be in a different field on the second day. Well, of course, they'd reach agreement in a hurry. But there is no urgency when you sit in Geneva.

So I applaud the president's desire to see us rid the world of landmines, but I think his administration's proposal is one that's bound to fail. I believe the "Ottawa Process" is far better. This is a process designed to have as many countries as possible join this winter in Canada and sign an agreement. The signatories won't produce landmines; they won't export landmines; they won't use landmines. And we have 90 countries or more that have pledged to sign, and these 90 countries are not insignificant countries -- you have Germany, Belgium, Italy, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Mozambique, which has an enormous landmine problem, and Angola, which has another enormous problem. These are countries that might claim their own need for landmines, but they are willing to give them up. And if the United States joined in that, I think the momentum would be such that all but a handful of countries would end up joining the ban. And those countries not joining would become pariahs.

Question: Other than the difference in the timeframe, do you see other differences between the two approaches?

Leahy: The timeframe is probably the biggest difference because Canada is talking about having a concrete agreement by the end of this year. And by just sheer force of momentum, they probably will. The CD could go on for years and years, during which millions of more landmines are going to be laid.

Even if we joined Canada and we push for as many signatories as possible by December, I have no thought that we would have every country in there, especially not Russia and China. But it would be like the Chemical Weapons Convention -- we would have most countries and the onus would be on those that had not joined.

In the Kennedy administration, President Kennedy unilaterally announced a nuclear test ban and challenged other nations to join with us, and eventually they did because we had set the moral example.

President Reagan did the same thing with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC): challenged other countries to join us and, eventually, most did. And President Bush negotiated it, and President Clinton, to his credit, pushed the CWC through a reluctant Senate. Even though we don't have all countries involved, we have most countries as a good solid step forward.

Well, far more innocent people have been killed and maimed by landmines than by either nuclear weapons or chemical weapons. And I would argue that the same philosophy that drove us to the Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention should drive this.

Question: What is Congress's role in helping achieve a landmine ban?

Leahy: Normally an arms control initiative will come from the president, and Congress reacts either for or against it, especially in the case of a treaty, which requires Senate approval. This is the only time I know of where the Congress has taken the lead. Sixty Senators have joined, and there probably will be more, in sponsoring the Landmine Elimination Act of 1997, also known as the Leahy-Hagel bill, which bans new deployments of anti-personnel landmines by the United States beginning on January 1, 2000. The only exception is the Korean Peninsula, where the president has the authority to delay applying the ban.

Question: Why do you think Congress has been so active on the landmine issue?

Leahy: Well, I've been pushing it hard. I'm not the only one, but I've been pushing it very hard for eight years. Congress first passed in 1992, over strong Pentagon opposition, the Leahy amendment, which said the United States could not export or transfer landmines for one year. That moratorium on exports has been renewed and has now become U.S. policy. Then, over very strenuous Pentagon opposition, a bill passed in 1996, that we could not use landmines for one year beginning in 1999, just to demonstrate that we can get along without them. That measure also extended the moratorium on exports.

On this latest one, I literally went around to virtually every senator and made my case. And it's an issue that, when you stop and think about it, people understand. For example, every senator who was a Vietnam combat veteran has joined this legislation. We have, among those who have joined, a large number of recipients of Purple Hearts, at least one Silver Star, a Congressional Medal of Honor, and numerous other citations. These are people who have been in battle, who have been wounded in battle, who have been distinguished for their valor in battle.

Question: In sponsoring landmine legislation, what have you and your counterparts in the House of Representatives hoped to accomplish?

Leahy: I hope that eventually the president will realize that the process in Geneva, the CD, is moving too slowly, will not accomplish a great deal, and that he will come to actively endorse our legislation, which would put the United States into the Canadian process and in a position of moral and strategic leadership on this issue. I think its doable and I think if we do this, a future generation will be very thankful to the United States.

Question: What is your view of the U.S. role in promoting and expanding humanitarian demining programs?

Leahy: I think we should. Most of the money that has been spent on demining is money that has come from amendments -- sponsored by myself and several of the other anti-landmines senators -- to the defense appropriations bill. We just got more money for this purpose in the fiscal year 1998 bill, and we'll continue to support it. But we could spend billions (thousands of millions) on demining and it wouldn't clear all the mines.

Last year, among all the different countries engaged in demining, several hundred million dollars was spent, but that succeeded in removing only a fraction of the number of additional mines that are being laid. You remove one mine and somewhere five more are being laid down.

One of the real problems is that a lot of countries have agricultural potential -- where people could at least raise the crops to feed their children and live lives -- but they can't get to the fields. If you know a field has one landmine, it might as well have a hundred.

So we should do everything possible to help in demining, but the best way is to stop using any more mines. As a practical matter you're not going to have real development go on in Bosnia, in parts of Central America, Africa, the Mekong Delta, and other places until you get rid of the landmines.

Question: Do you have any hope for any of the anti-personnel landmine alternatives that are being considered?

Leahy: There is one that the Pentagon touts as a "smart mine" (one that deactivates after a short period of time), and I say show me the mine that is smart enough to know the difference between a child and a soldier. They are not as fool-proof as they like to think they are. Most commanders said they would not trust the mines to turn themselves off before they march their own troops through.

If you want to set up a defense perimeter for your own troops, there are all kinds of ways of doing this. There are command-detonated mines, which require somebody to pull the trigger other than the victim. There are all kinds of new surveillance techniques, and these are what I would go to.

Anybody can argue that somewhere there is a military advantage to using landmines. I could also point out how I might command the most powerful, best equipped and trained Army in history, but my soldiers are still going to lose arms and legs from $5 landmines.

Question: You have said that landmines have some marginal military value. What value is that?

Leahy: The marginal value is that you can set up a perimeter defense for your people. If you are expecting a larger force to attack, you can slow them down or channel them into a particular area, but the little advantage that you get from that is far outweighed by the disadvantage when you have to send your own troops out when there are mines on the other side, and the disadvantage we face when American soldiers end up killed or injured by our own mines.

Question: Why did you exempt, in the Leahy-Hagel legislation, the Claymore and anti-tank mines?

Leahy: The Claymore mine is command-detonated. A child won't set it off by touching it. Somebody has to pull the trigger. The same with anti-tank mines, you can step on those without them going off.

Question: Tell me a little about the fund you set up for victims of landmines?

Leahy; The Leahy War Victims Fund -- which was created as a part of the foreign aid budget beginning in 1989 -- spends $5 million per year to buy prosthetics and help rehabilitate victims, primarily victims of landmines. It doesn't take sides; it goes wherever it can be used. The fund has helped a lot of people in very poor countries who would never have been able to afford an artificial limb.

Question: You've had to propose extending the U.S. moratorium on export of landmines at least once now. Do you anticipate having to do so again?

Leahy: No. The administration has adopted it as its policy, and I think that will be enacted into permanent law. I'd like to tie it into the whole Leahy-Hagel bill. I'll be talking to the president about it.