U.S.-Led Push for Land Mine Ban Stymied

The Clinton administration effort to negotiate--via the United Nations’ Conference on Disarmament--a worldwide ban on the use of land mines has withered amid opposition here, diplomats said Thursday.

The failure of the 61 nations participating in the Geneva conference to even begin talks on the issue may strengthen the argument of those within the administration and in Congress who contend that the United States must pursue other options--perhaps including unilateral rejection of mines--to reduce and eventually eliminate the devices.

Mines kill or maim an estimated 26,000 people, mainly civilians, each year, experts say.

There are believed to be more than 110 million mines, left from wars and civil conflicts, buried around the world. They often remain long after combat has ceased. Not only do they kill and injure civilians, they keep farm land out of production, block roads, villages and airports, and drive up medical costs, mainly in underdeveloped nations.

In January, President Clinton announced a permanent ban on American sales of mines to other countries and said the United States would introduce a comprehensive treaty here prohibiting their use, production, stockpiling and transfer.

But the disarmament conference operates by consensus, meaning the opposition of even one country can derail a proposal.

On Thursday, Mexico declared its opposition, and other countries, including Syria and Vietnam, indicated that they were not ready to begin talks on the issue without instructions from home.

“I don’t think there’s very much chance as we stand right now of getting a negotiation started in the near term,” Stephen Ledogar, the U.S. envoy at the talks, said Thursday. “You have a whole series of folks who are unlikely to even agree to the mechanism to get the negotiations started.”

Ledogar said some countries opposed the ban, arguing that mines are a military necessity; others say the issue would be best negotiated in another forum.

Talks are also stalled by the insistence of some developing nations, led by India and Pakistan, that the conference focus first on nuclear disarmament, a position rejected by the United States and other declared nuclear powers.

Ledogar’s assessment was echoed by British Ambassador Michael Weston, who has taken a leading role in the mine initiative here, and by Mark Moher, ambassador from Canada, which favors an alternative approach to abolishing the deadly devices.

Efforts to eliminate the weapons now will probably turn to the Canadian proposal, which calls on other countries to sign a treaty in Ottawa next December. Work on a text of such a treaty began last month in Vienna.

The principal difference in the two approaches is that the disarmament conference would seek universal agreement on mine abolition step-by-step, beginning with a ban on international sales of the weapons.

The Canadian plan would get as many countries as possible to agree to a total ban on use, production and stockpiling of mines by the year 2000 in hopes that would pressure other nations to sign.

Most of those in the informal coalition of peace activists, humanitarian agencies, church groups, medical organizations and others that have been in the forefront of the anti-land mine movement in recent years favor the Canadian proposal. But a number of military powers, notably China and Russia, have expressed no interest in anti-mine proposals.

The Clinton administration has refrained from criticizing the Canadian plan but favors the disarmament conference because the Defense Department has been reluctant to surrender a weapon until almost every other country also has agreed to do so.