70 Nations Meet to Consider Ban on Land Mines

When former British soldier Chris Moon told representatives of 70 nations at a conference here on land mines that it is time to “rid the world of this inherently indiscriminate weapon that kills or maims a man, woman or child every 20 minutes,” the hook he has in place of a right hand showed that he knew what he was talking about.

Moon’s hand and part of a leg were shredded 18 months ago when a mine exploded underneath him in Mozambique, where the 34-year-old was supervising a mine clearance project for a British humanitarian agency.

Today he is at the forefront of an international effort to outlaw land mines as weapons of war by placing them in the same category as poison gas and bacterial agents.

That movement has gained momentum, and the three-day conference here, which is being sponsored by the Canadian government, is seen as the biggest step yet toward a world ban on the use, manufacture and sale of anti-personnel mines.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, in an attempt to assert Canadian leadership on human rights issues, organized the meeting for “like-minded” governments. Seats at the conference table were reserved for countries that have endorsed the elimination of mines, but 24 other countries were invited as “observers”--and the objects of none-too-subtle pressure to alter their policies on the explosives.

Private organizations opposed to mines are also participating in public and private sessions. Officials are expected to end the session today with an announcement on their next step, but the long-term strategy is to embarrass, isolate and wear down opposing governments.

A year ago, 14 nations backed the ban; today, 47 countries, including the United States, have endorsed it in some form.

Organizers hope that this meeting will broaden support and bring increased diplomatic pressure on holdouts such as Russia, India, Israel and Pakistan, all of which have observers at the conference.

There are believed to be more than 110 million land mines--the deadly debris of wars and civil conflicts--buried around the world.

An estimated 26,000 people, mainly civilians, are killed or wounded by mines every year; sometimes they lie alone in agony for days, waiting to be discovered on an isolated road or field.

But the impact of the explosions cannot be measured in the toll of lost lives and limbs alone, according to backers of the ban.

The lingering presence of land mines takes farmland out of production, effectively blockades roads, villages and airports, drives up medical costs and cuts into developing nations’ economic productivity.

“They prolong the war long after the guns are silent,” said Jody Williams, a Vermont activist with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation who is credited with co-founding the anti-mine movement in 1991.

Conference organizers have sought to bring government representatives here face to face with the effects of land mines, and Moon’s address at the opening session was part of that effort.

Delegates are being lobbied by survivors of land-mine explosions who maneuver through the crowds in wheelchairs or on crutches. The delegates walk past displays of artificial legs and dummy explosives and along hallways posted with graphic photographs of mine victims--including a poster-sized image of the bloody, shattered face of a child.

The meeting also reflects the rising influence of relief agencies, church groups, medical organizations, human rights advocates and peace activists as an independent diplomatic force. These groups--increasingly sophisticated at plugging in to the world media and influencing governments--now are regularly included at big international conferences.

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Working together as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, they are largely responsible for building world support for a ban, diplomats here acknowledge.

Linda Tripp, a Canadian official of World Vision, an international aid organization, said agencies such as hers joined the effort because “when the armies leave, we’re the ones left picking up the pieces. We’re the ones left hanging in there with the victims and their families.”

World Vision, CARE and other agencies operating in developing nations now fund mine removal along with famine relief, health care, housing construction and other traditional aid programs. In part, Tripp said, it is a matter of self-preservation. Humanitarian workers often find themselves operating in mine-infested regions.

“Mines have moved beyond a weapon of war or a weapon of defense for the military,” she said. “They’ve become a weapon of terror used against the civilian population. . . . Our staff takes a risk every time they drive the roads, every time they walk on the fields.”

The experience of North Atlantic Treaty Organization soldiers and U.N. peacekeepers in heavily mined Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia has also contributed to international support for the ban, according to U.S. and Canadian officials.

More than 20 foreign soldiers have died in the former Yugoslav federation as a result of mine blasts, and an estimated 3 million to 8 million mines remain in the region.

Although the United States supports the ban, the U.S. delegation here has been on the defensive because the Clinton administration wants certain exemptions to the ban and opposes a target date of 2000, as sought by activists.

In a statement issued in May, President Clinton said the United States would “aggressively pursue” a world ban on land mines to be completed “as soon as possible.”

The U.S. has placed a moratorium on export of land mines and is expected to destroy 3 million mines from its stockpile by 1999, but it proposes to exclude from any ban the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. The U.S. also continues to use so-called smart mines, which are programmed to deactivate after a set period.

Thomas E. McNamara, assistant secretary of state for political and military policy and head of the U.S. delegation to the conference, said the United States is wary of unilateral action.

“It has to be a global, worldwide ban,” he said in an interview. “That doesn’t mean every country in the world has to sign on before we sign on, but it does have to be worldwide.”

China, which is not represented at the conference, is considered the biggest exporter of mines, and supporters of the ban acknowledge that the Chinese government may be impervious to diplomatic pressure on the issue.

Nonetheless, they favor using conferences such as this one, rather than the formal treaty processes of the United Nations, to advance the cause.

Efforts to get mines outlawed under international conventional weapons agreements have been frustrated by U.N. procedures that call for agreement by consensus, which gives every participating nation an effective veto.