Death Lurking Underfoot : International meeting will address the intractable problem of land mines

Civil wars and cross-border wars, some of them ended long ago, some still being fought, have left a deadly legacy beneath the feet of tens of millions of people. The United Nations estimates that 110 million live land mines remain to be located and neutralized in 64 countries. Many of these cheap and easily portable weapons can be detonated by the pressure of even a child’s footstep.

About 100,000 mines are found and disarmed each year, but meanwhile millions of others are planted. Countless people have been killed or maimed in Afghanistan, Cambodia, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere.

Can these fearful weapons be controlled? An international treaty on land mines has existed since 1980. Next month a conference in Vienna will talk about toughening its provisions. Achieving a full ban seems unrealistic. The U.S. military, for example, has strongly objected even to a one-year moratorium on antipersonnel mine use voted by the Senate, and military officials in other countries similarly insist on keeping the weapons as an option. But effective steps short of a ban are possible. Among them are applying the treaty, adopted by 52 nations, to civil as well as international conflicts, banning metal-free non-detectable mines and requiring mines used outside of mapped minefields to self-destruct after a time.

The United States is one of several dozen countries that now prohibit or tightly limit mine exports. Other countries, notably China and Pakistan, have stepped up their exports.

Land mines, because they are so easily hidden, so difficult to detect and above all so undiscriminating, are true terror weapons. Most of their victims continue to be civilians. These are the harsh facts the Vienna conference must keep uppermost in mind.