INTERVIEWER: Okay. February 10, 1999. Interview with Bobby Muller. How do you think winning the Nobel Peace Prize has changed the work of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the US Campaign to Ban Landmines, and the awareness around the world of the landmines issue?

MULLER: I was really impressed at how powerful the Nobel Peace Prize has been in this movement on landmines. But, it's also been a little bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we got an awful lot of recognition and, frankly, instant credibility to the issue, which has really helped us as we've gone after additional support to continue the work of the campaign. But, the other side of it is that, because we did get an international treaty signed by 122 countries in Ottawa at the same time that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, a lot of people sort of think, well, okay, that's it. And, we're really finding that it's a challenge to re-energize, you know, a broad constituency in America about the continuing concerns that landmines represent.

So, on the one hand, the Nobel Peace Prize was a tremendous lift in public awareness and credibility, which is a good positioning to really go after digging after the additional supporters out there, but, with the broader public, it sort of singled that we accomplished a task when obviously we haven't.

INTERVIEWER: Now that you've achieved what some people thought was impossible, having an international mine ban treaty, what do you see as the next steps for the landmine campaign, and what are the priorities that you'll be undertaking in the future?

MULLER: The work of the campaign, as we originally set it out, still remains, you know, to have, I think, a 134 countries now behind this treaty is fine. However, it's a treaty that doesn't really have sanctions. The ultimate sanction of this treaty is the stigmatizing of the weapon. So that anybody who uses it pays the price in public opinion. For that to be achieved, you really need to universalize the condemnation of the weapon. It's like sanctions. You know, unilaterally, the don't work. You know, with this treaty, it needs to be a universalized condemnation.

For that to happen in all the recalcitrant countries out there that need to be brought on board, you have to first get the United States. They're simply not going to get ahead of the United States. So, getting the United States on board and having the United States repudiate anti-personnel landmines, as an acceptable weapon, so that it doesn't by that position, undercut the entire moral authority of the Ottawa treaty is critical. So, we're really working on getting the United States on board and then on further universalizing of support.

You do have a lot of countries out there that have anywhere between seventy, eighty, ninety, million landmines in the ground. And, we've got to the humanitarian de-mining to clean them up. You've got hundreds of thousands of landmine victims that need continuing rehabilitative services. You're still realizing tens of thousand of casualties. So, there's an awful lot of work you can continue to do, for sure.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think the way to get the US to c change their position is to work with the US government or to pressure from outside working with international governments to pressure the United States?

MULLER: Senator Leahy, who has guided all of our efforts on this campaign, has been very effective in managing a two-tiered approach with the administration. Part of it is being really cooperative and part of it is really putting pressure on. And, it's really through the personal relationship that Senator Leahy has with the President, that something really significant, that I don't think an awful lot of people realized happened last year, when the President said no in September of '97, right after the death of Diana, which was a very emotional period, right after ninety other countries left Norway saying we're going to go to Ottawa, the President of the United States said, we're not. And, he said, we're not, in a way that presented a permanent roadblock to the United States ever getting married to this treaty.

By giving the military an entire category of anti-personnel landmines that would be exempted from any requirement to find replacements for or do anything about. It was Senator Leahy, working on the President, cooperatively, friendly, that got the President, last year, to issue a presidential decision directive that took back that exemption he gave the military in '97, and at least provides the opportunity, now, for the United States to get connected to the Ottawa treaty, by mandating that the military put online an aggressive program to find alternatives to the smart-mines and ___ systems which really have constituted a roadblock between the US and the Ottawa treaty. So, it's a combination of both, you know, friendliness and pressure to move the administration.

INTERVIEWER: How then do you see the role of the international campaign and the US campaign changing? I mean, you've gotten this treaty signed, you're moving towards universalization, what do you see as the priorities or the next steps? Do you think there will be some merging of ideologies of other campaigns, or is it just going to be continuing forward on the goals of the campaign set out from the beginning?

MULLER: When we were in Oslo, and the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, I learned a very important lesson. We had ceremonies that were very nice. We had the king of Norway, we had Norwegian parliamentarians, we had all the pomp and ceremony that you would ever want. And, all the speeches and all the ceremonies went absolutely no place. At night, we had a concert and we had Mariah Carey, Boyz II Men, Sinead O'Connor, and that went out to literally two hundred million people around the world. And, I'll take the three minutes that I had on stage in that concert that went out to two hundred million people instead of the week's activities of speeches that nobody heard.

Right now, we're really focusing in the US on becoming, quote, the "cool guys." And, we're trying to pump up the volume within the American public about landmines as a continuing concern. We've had several concerts already. We have Bruce Springsteen that's going to be helping us out, Cheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, and lots of other people that are going to be carrying the message to the American public that landmines are continuing to destroy countries, people's lives, the United States has yet to sign this treaty, and really reinvigorate a public awareness and ultimately through that the support to get both the funding and the political support to help finally get towards a solution to this problem.

INTERVIEWER: What can I, as an average American, citizen, what can I do about the landmines issue?

MULLER: Well, we're going to have, very shortly, an omnibus piece of legislation that will be introduced by Senator Leahy that is going to address victim's assistance, de-mining, and getting the United States to sign this treaty. We need broad support.

In the House of Representatives, contact your congressman, contact your senators. Write to the President, and urge that the comprehensive legislation for landmines be enacted. You can support the organizations that are out there. International Campaign for a Landmine Free World. We're now undertaking a $16 million global survey of landmine effected countries so as to inform donor nations what the impact of landmines are in country 'A' versus country 'B' so that there's a rational basis to put the millions of dollars needed for de-mining, and we're running victims assistance projects as are other organizations. We're in Angola, we're in Cambodia, we're in El Salvador, we're in Vietnam. Helping the victims, doing the de-mining, furthering the public awareness programs is what you can do in supporting the NGO's involved, contact your legislative representatives, and push legislation at the same time.

INTERVIEWER: I'm going to change gears a little bit here. But, what is your opinion regarding the reasons the US has given for not signing the treaty, the Korean exception and the mixed mine ____?

MULLER: In 1996, we published an open letter to the President. Full-page New York Times ad. Singed by General Schwartzkoff, former chairman of Joint Chiefs, General Dave Jones, General Galvin, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, the fellow that ran Star Wars for President Reagan - a whole bunch of the really leading retired military figures saying "get rid of anti-personnel landmines. Not simply because it's the humanitarian thing to do, but it's the militarily responsible thing to do." We would not have had those military leaders come behind this campaign if we in any way at all compromised the safety or the well-being of American soldiers.

The reasons that the Pentagon has advanced for not giving up this weapon really had very little to do with the weapon. They have everything to do with not setting up precedent that their concerned about, that if we reached into the arsenals to take out an indiscriminate weapon, that other categories of weapons or munitions, cluster bombs, ____, etc., would be at risk to the same kind of an argument. So, this really doesn't have anything to do with anti-personnel landmines, it has to do with the broader category of weapons that the military simply doesn't want to put at risk by having the precedent of stripping this one system away.

INTERVIEWER: You work for an organization that represents the interests of veterans of America. Do landmines protect US soldiers? Are these things that help advance military strategy?

MULLER: Every objective study that has been done, including by senior military think-tanks, has said the same thing. US soldiers would be better off if they didn't encounter anti-personnel landmines on any of the fields that they wind up getting deployed on. Remember, in Vietnam, the single leading cause of US casualties in that war was landmines. And, the irony is in that ninety percent of the cases that US soldiers got blown up, they were either our own landmines or landmines that had our own componetry.

You know, our peace keeping operations, through the UN and NATO, the number one cause of casualties are landmines. Anti-personnel landmines represent the poor man's weapon. And, even though it's a poor man's weapon, when it's buried in the ground, we do not have adequate technology to x-ray the ground as our troops are moving over it. And, we wind up, just like civilians, the majority of casualties, victims of this weapons. It's indiscriminate between the good guys and the bad guys, every bit as much as it's indiscriminate between the military and the civilian population.

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of the US focus on global humanitarian de-mining? Is this a question of the US stalling on signing the treaty, showing, look how much we're doing, we're focusing on de-mining? I mean, clearly, it's an important component of addressing the landmines issue. But, if that's what their focus is, is there really a reality that they will then sign the treaty and look for alternatives to these mines?

MULLER: I accept the US commitment to humanitarian de-mining as a legitimate one. It is important, and independent in its own right of whether the US signs a treaty sooner or later. It's a job that needs to get done. And, the fact that the United States is willing to step up to the plate, provide millions of dollars to help get this thing underway, I think is welcome and can only be applauded.

Everybody that gets involved with landmines quickly understands the true impact that this weapon is having around the world and, the more connectedness that we can get on the humanitarian side of this issue, with the need for the de-mining, the need for victims assistance, you simply build that much more support for the political side of the equation, which is to turn off the spicket and get this weapon out of play. So, everything that's done to keep a resonance out there and this issue in the public consciousness, I think, furthers the ultimate objective of getting a political ban universalized.

INTERVIEWER: That was really all of the questions that I had. Did you guys have anything that I might have forgotten?

MULLER: What we're working on right now is a real public awareness campaign through a lot of celebrities that really are amplifiers in getting the word out there that we have not finished the job, that we have to clean up these countries, we have to get victims out there treated, and we have to get universalized support for this treaty. Getting that public awareness generated is a critical step to ultimately being able to pull down the financial and political support to finish the job. We are going to focus on getting the United States on board, we are engaging the military in a debate about alternative capacity to what anti-personnel landmines are doing, and basically eroding their arguments so that they're left a little bit more exposed to be able to get the politics of this issue addressed.

There is, you know, one really interesting response to the successes of the landmines campaign, particularly through the achievement of a treaty and the receipt of the Nobel Prize, which is, you know, in the public's mind, I think, a little bit of romanticized view that, somehow, civil society, which is a term a lot of people like to use today, you know, through the information capacity that the Internet and Email provides, etc., somehow it's able to really galvanize a public constituency that bends governments to their knee and gets the right thing done. Well, that's a very inspiring notion, and there's a little bit of that, obviously, that's been involved.

But, it really is, and don't delude yourself, Politics 101. It's getting the political actors to get behind the moral call that the NGO groups and others are putting out there, and it really has been Senator Leahy and Lloyd Axworthy, the Canadian foreign minister, that took this moral call and gave it implementation and moved the governments to give the traction that ultimately got this treaty. It's inside politics a lot here in Washington between principally Senator Lahey and the President. Don't kid yourself. The world hasn't changed all that much. It's still, it's kind of politics 101.

INTERVIEWER: Do you think, just one thing I thought of when you were saying that was, there's this notion that you've achieved the treaty, public opinion has other things to worry about. You know, there are lot of other issues that are worthy of people's attention. Are you finding that a lot of people don't realize there's more work to be done because they see that you've achieved this mine ban treaty?

MULLER: Landmines, as an issue of public consciousness, you know, was really out there, particularly in the second half of '97. Diana's death really connected it to the public. We had a certain momentum in working towards the deadline of the Ottawa treaty, and we were getting coverage an awful lot. That's gone. The public perception, I think, generally is, well, I think they sort of solved that problem. It doesn't take much to go back and engage the public and point out, hey, no, the United States never did sign that treaty.

By the way, really, nothing's being done on cleaning up all those countries with landmine problems and all those victims out there, and we're still continuing to realize tens of thousands a year, nobody's doing a whole lot for them. Come on, let's finish the job. So, I think we have, you know, lost a lot of the media effort that kept the awareness out there, but we definitely have a well that we can go to and draw some real support from.