56 Senators Urge Ban on Land Mines

Fifty-six members of the Senate, including a handful of conservative Republicans and its six Vietnam combat veterans, will push for a law to permanently ban the use of antipersonnel land mines by U.S. forces. That will put a majority of the GOP-controlled Senate on the record with a tougher position against the weapons than President Clinton, who has opposed such a unilateral land-mine ban because of Pentagon objections. The bill is the most concrete example in the United States of a recent strengthening of international opposition to land mines on grounds that their humanitarian cost outweighs their military value.