U.S. Wants to Strengthen Landmine Protocol to Make Mines More Detectable
(U.S. official says reliable self-destruct mechanisms needed)
by Wendy Lubetkin
Washington File European Correspondent

Date: May 20, 2000

Geneva -- The United States would like to see the 2001 Review Conference of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) adopt new and stronger restrictions on anti-vehicle and anti-personnel landmines (APL), making all mines detectable, including anti-vehicle mines, and ensuring that all remotely deployed mines are equipped with reliable self-destruct features.

Michael Matheson, Acting Legal Officer at the Department of State, said the United States presented a number of ideas for improving the CCW's Amended Mines Protocol during a May meeting of experts in Geneva.

The Amended Mines Protocol is the only international agreement to cover all types of landmines and affects the majority of the world's anti-personnel landmine stocks. The Protocol is different from the Ottawa Convention in that it does not ban APL use. Instead, it strengthens international restrictions on the use and transfer of landmines.

Matheson said the Protocol remains very important, notwithstanding the adoption of the Ottawa Convention, because the major mine-using nations, including the United States, Russia, China, India and Pakistan have not ratified the Ottawa Convention and are unlikely to do so in the immediate future. All of those states, however, are party to the Amended Mines Protocol.

Secondly, the Ottawa Convention is limited to anti-personnel landmines, where as the CCW Protocol includes provisions which cover anti-vehicle mines, booby traps and various other devices which can pose a risk to the civilian population even after a conflict has ended.

In particular, the Protocol requires that all remotely delivered anti-personnel landmines -- those delivered by aircraft or artillery from a distance -- be equipped with reliable self-destruct and self-deactivation mechanisms which will render them inactive within 120 days.

It also bans all non-detectable anti-personnel landmines, and anti-detection mines, described by deminers as a particularly heinous type of mine designed to blow up if a detection device is passed over it.

Currently, however, the ban on non-detectable mines, and the self-destruct requirement for remotely delivered mines, apply only to anti-personnel mines.

"Anti-vehicle mines can present a danger to civilian vehicles in civilian traffic, and present a danger to humanitarian relief missions and peacekeeping missions," Matheson told a press briefing in Geneva, May 30. "Unless these mines can be detected and therefore cleared, these dangers will remain," he said.

The United States also wants to see the Amended Mines Protocol strengthened through the addition of a comprehensive compliance regime. In particular, the United States would like to see the adoption of a procedure for considering allegations of violations, to include the possibility of on-site inspections.

Currently the Protocol allows states parties to raise possible issues of non-compliance at the annual meetings of the parties. "But this is not nearly enough," Matheson said. "We need to have a much more comprehensive and effective compliance regime which provides for the possibility of inspections."

The United States also called for "enhancing" the reliability of the self-destruct mechanisms. The Protocol currently requires that only 1 in 1,000 landmines remain active after 120 days. Washington wants to raise this failure standard to one in 10,000, according to Matheson.