***** "US No Longer Promoting Landmine Ban" *****
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by-Haider Rizvi
Courtesy of: Yahoo news
Wednesday December 28, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com

United Nations (OneWorld)--In 1994, the United States was the first nation to call for the elimination of landmines that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world.

But that was then. Today, Washington not only stands in opposition to an international treaty that bans the use and production of antipersonnel landmines, but intends to make new ones too.

In a reversal of its earlier policy, the US is reportedly planning to produce a new generation of landmines called "spider" by March 2007, a move that has alarmed civil society groups campaigning for a global ban on the use and production of landmines for years.

The 1997 treaty, which has been endorsed by nearly 150 countries, calls for a ban on the production, stockpiling, and use of antipersonnel landmines.

Major powers among the 40 nations who have not signed the treaty are the United States, Russia, and China.

Last month, more than 100 countries sent delegates to an international meeting on landmines in Croatia, but the United States did not.

Ironically, the United States was at the forefront of international efforts to adopt the landmine treaty in the 1990s.

The United States would "seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of antipersonnel mines," President Clinton said at the start of his second term in the White House.

But the Bush administration reversed that promise last February with the State Department declaring that landmines still have "a valid and essential roles in protecting US forces in military operations."

"no other weapon currently exists that provides all the capabilities provided by landmines," the official statement added.

"It's a step backward for the United States," says Stephen Goose, an arms expert with US-based Human Rights Watch.

"while the rest of the world is rushing to embrace an immediate and comprehensive ban, the Bush administration has decided to cling to the weapons in perpetuity," he adds.

Between 15,000 and 20,000 people are killed or maimed by mines each year--mostly civilians and mostly in countries now at peace--according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), an independent umbrella organization.

Landmines are especially heinous weapons of war, the group says, because they are indiscriminate--unable to distinguish between soldiers, civilians, peacekeepers, and workers, or others--and inhumane--designed to maim rather than kill, but frequently killing nonetheless.

They also deprive people of land and infrastructure in some of the poorest countries in the world, hamper reconstruction and the delivery of aid, deprive communities and families of breadwinners, and kill livestock and wild animals, according to the group.