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"UNITED METHODIST DAILY NEWS 97" by SUSAN PEEK on April 15, 1997 at 14:24
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Note 497 modified by UMNS on Dec. 9, 1997 at 17:24 Eastern (5366 characters).

CONTACT: Linda Bloom					685(10-21-71B){497}
	    New York (212) 870-3803			       Dec. 9, 1997

Signing of landmines treaty
brings a 'defining moment'

A UMNS Commentary
by Randy Day*

	I recently joined hundreds of leaders and citizens of the global community in
Ottawa, Canada, to witness and celebrate the signing of the Convention on the
Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel
Mines and their Destruction.
	Received with a standing ovation, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd
Axworthy proclaimed the International Campaign to Ban Landmines as "`a
defining moment' in which international public opinion has determined that
there are limits to human behavior, even on a battlefield..."
	United Methodist voices around the world did their part in creating this
global, grassroots movement. Children walking to school or gathering firewood
will finally have an earth free of these silent killers.
	"The ban treaty will save perhaps millions of lives and spare many millions
more from being shattered. It is a gift to humanity. Caring nations will sign,
others will not," said Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams.
	"The tide of history has changed," she told the delegates. "Together, we are
a superpower. It's a new definition of superpower -- it is not one, it is
everybody."
	I was elated with the leadership of Williams -- the first U.S. citizen to win
the Nobel Peace Prize since Elie Wiesel in 1986 -- but I was immensely
disappointed that the United States was not among the 120 nations signing this
historic treaty.
	President Clinton missed a momentous opportunity to provide leadership for
the people of the world, who live with the fact that 110 million landmines lay
buried in the ground and another 100 million mines are stockpiled. It takes a
village to raise a child, but the same village can become immobilized by
having to care for landmine survivors.
	Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a leading advocate for a comprehensive ban
against landmines, told the conference that "the President's advisors wrongly
defined the issue as a choice between the lives and limbs of our soldiers
versus civilians. They were blind to the fact that both would benefit from a
treaty that stigmatizes this weapon."
	Karl F. Inderfurth, head of the U.S. delegation in Ottawa, said during a
roundtable forum that the Clinton Administration will increase spending on
removing landmines to $100 million next year. Though not a signatory, the U.S.
wants to raise annual international spending on mine clearance to $1 billion
by the year 2010.
	In listening to Inderfurth's pledge to increase government and private
donations to the demining effort, I acknowledge it is a beginning: yet, seen
in percentage of total Pentagon expenditures, it is petty cash. It certainly
is no substitute for signing the Ottawa treaty, the first disarmament
instrument to ban a widely-used weapon of war.
	The humanity of this effort shone through at the conference. The joyous
participation of two children in the opening ceremony for a parallel "People's
Treaty" was the pinnacle for me, equal in every way to the dynamic moments
when Canada, Norway and South Africa had signed the official treaty two hours
earlier.
	The first two world citizens to sign the People's Treaty were Song Kosal, a
petite 13-year-old Cambodian girl who lost her right leg when she stepped on a
landmine at the age of four, and Lindsay Wilcox, a 10-year-old Canadian girl
who -- along with her 13-year-old brother Jordan -- had persuaded their father
to take them to the conference on Parliament Hill. They had learned about the
signing through their church.
	Landmine survivors from Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia, Mozambique, South Africa
and other nations approached the table on crutches and in wheelchairs to
support the ban.
	It was an honor for me to sign the People's Treaty. I remembered the
Mozambican children whom I've met who live daily with the pain of being
landmine survivors. The children of Mozambique remain at risk because one
million mines are buried there, claiming at least 40 lives each month. In the
10 months since I attended a regional landmines conference in Maputo, 400
innocent civilians have died, approximately the attendance of our 11 p.m.
Christmas Eve service.
	One of the conference speakers, Cornelio Sommaruga, president of the
International Committee of the Red Cross, asked two questions which merit
discussion in every United Methodist Church.
	"In demonstrating that it is indeed possible to respond resolutely to the
trauma and suffering of humanity...why does it happen so seldom?" he asked.
"Why is war waged with one's whole mind and heart and soul, while struggles
for humanity are too often waged, if at all, with only half of our being?"
	Enormous work waits to be done. In addition to assuring enforcement of the
treaty as soon as possible (achieved when ratified by 40 countries), the
urgent challenges of the destruction of stockpiling, of demining efforts, and
the care, rehabilitation and reintegration of mine victims call out for a
compassionate and determined response from all United Methodists.
# # #
*Day, senior pastor, Jesse Lee Memorial United Methodist Church, Ridgefield,
Conn., was a nongovernmental organization (NG0) delegate to the Dec. 2-4
Ottawa conference.
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