Disappointment by Campaign
for Elimintation of Mines as Weapons
by Philippe Naughton
Landmines kill or maim 25,000 people every year. About 110 million mines lie hidden in 64 countries.
According to U.N. figures, landmines kill or maim 25,000 people every year and about 110 million mines lie hidden in 64 countries, just waiting to be stepped on by a child at play or farmer tending his crops. In some former conflict zones, such as Angola, Afghanistan and Somalia, landmines represent a daily threat. In Cambodia, where thousands of people have been killed and 35,000 maimed, mines even outnumber people.
The campaign for a ban on anti-personnel mines has been gaining ground. Twenty-eight states now back a ban — Australia and Germany announced their support last week — and army chiefs increasingly question the military value of the weapons. Campaigners say the movement has been helped by reports that the United States could soon change its landmine policy and back a ban on the use of anti-personnel (or AP) mines.
General John Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was reported to have ordered a review of Pentagon policy on mines last month. Soon afterwards, 15 retired U.S. generals including Gulf War commander Norman Schwarzkopf wrote an open letter to President Bill Clinton saying that AP mines were not essential and a ban would be "not only humane but militarily responsible." But the negotiators seem to be lagging behind. Campaigners say two years of talks to review the landmines protocol of the 1980 U.N. Conventional Weapons Convention made little headway.
It is also likely to set strict limits on the use of so-called "dumb" AP mines — cheap, undetectable mines which can lie hidden for generations. Under the text now proposed, such mines could be used only in fenced and guarded areas, for example along borders. Other AP mines would have to either emit a signal or contain a minimum amount of metal to make them detectable. The International Committee of the Red Cross says there also appears to be agreement that remotely-delivered AP mines — new technology allows armies to fire tens of thousands of mines from a distance — must self-destruct within an agreed period.
But the ICRC, which argues that only a total ban would be effective, says loopholes are being written into the text as it is negotiated, even on the basic definition of a an AP mine. The latest "chairman's text" says an AP mine should mean a mine "primarily designed" to be exploded by the presence, proximity or contact of a person. The protocol's wider definition of a mine is a munition "designed to be exploded" by a person or vehicle.
The ICRC says the introduction of the word "primarily" puts a legal and technical ambiguity into the very heart of the text and could allow "dual use" mines — AP mines that can
also stop tanks, for example — to be used with impunity.
"The victim who steps on a mine and loses a limb will notreally mind whether it was primarily designed to do that or not,"' said one ICRC official. "The effect will be the same."
A tighter protocol should have been concluded in Vienna in October but the review conference was adjourned for lack of progress. Further "technical" talks followed in Geneva in January to allow delegates to reach a new protocol at the final two-week session in Geneva starting on April 22. Some 50 countries have signed up to the 1980 protocol. The Geneva meeting is expected to agree on extending the protocol to cover internal as well as international conflicts.
Images by Cynthia Lee
GENEVA, April 21 (Reuters) — Campaigners for an international ban on anti-personnel landmines are increasingly confident that they will eventually win their fight. But not quite yet. Global negotiations starting on Monday to review a 1980 agreement on landmine use are expected to tighten up restrictions on certain types of mine, but an outright ban will not even be on the agenda.
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