Floor Statement of Sen. Patrick Leahy: KOSOVO'S MINEFIELDS

June 22, 1999

As thousands of Kosovar Albanians flood across the Macedonian and Albanian borders we are getting the first reports of refugee landmine victims. Last week, two refugees were killed and another seriously injured as they hurried to return to their homes in Kosovo.

Some 25 people have been injured or killed by mines in Kosovo since the refugees began returning there.

This senseless loss of life is tragic, but it was predictable. Tens of thousands of landmines were left behind by Serb forces. Others were put there by the KLA. They litter fields, roads, and bridges, and have even been left in houses.

They are the greatest threat to people on the ground, including NATO forces, and the number of innocent victims -- children playing, farmers plowing their fields, women walking along the roads -- will continue to rise.

It is one thing to conduct an air war with the latest laser-guided technology. Thankfully, there were no NATO casualties. It is another thing to face an invisible enemy on the ground. In Bosnia, most U.S. casualties were from landmines. In Kosovo too, mines are the invisible enemy, unable to distinguish between friend or foe, soldier or civilian, adult or child. A comprehensive strategy for clearing the mines and aiding the victims is critical to promoting peace, moving forward with reconstruction and economic development. The United States, as the leader of NATO, will play a key role in designing and financing that strategy.

But there is another key part of the problem: the continued use of mines. It is a bit like trying to keep garbage out of a river. You can clean up the garbage, but if people keep dumping it in you haven't solved the problem. You need to stop the garbage from being dumped. We need to stigmatize anti-personnel mines so they are not put into the ground in the first place.

That is what most countries are trying to do. One-hundred-thirty-five countries have signed the Ottawa Convention that bans the use of anti- personnel mines, and 81countries have ratified it. That Convention sets a new international norm, outlawing a weapon that has caused enormous suffering of innocent people in some 70 countries.

And, like booby traps, which are outlawed, mines are triggered by the victim. They are inherently indiscriminate and the casualties are usually noncombatants.

Unfortunately, the United States, with by far the most powerful military, has not joined the Convention. So, despite the leading role we have taken in demining and helping victims, the United States, like Russia, China, and some other countries that manufacture mines, is standing in the way of the effort to outlaw this weapon.

Ironically, every member of NATO, except our country and Turkey, have signed the Ottawa Convention. We not only weaken the Convention by our absence, we also complicate joint military operations with our NATO allies.

The United States can send deminers. We can give millions of dollars in aid to mine victims. We can sit down with other nations to rebuild as many countries as there are conflicts. But the truth is, the only effective strategy to stop the carnage caused by landmines has three parts -- demining, victims assistance, and banning their use.

That is what the Ottawa Convention does, and unless countries like the United States, Russia, Pakistan, India and China join, they invite others to keep using mines -- in Kosovo today, and somewhere else tomorrow.

The United States is not causing the mine problem. But it is equally true that without us, there is no solution.