| U.S.
Campaign to Ban Landmines In this edition. . .
Note to readers on new U.S. landmine production Previous editions of the USCBL email newsletter reported that the Pentagon planned to decide whether to begin production of a new landmine system called "Spider" in December 2005. The decision has been delayed until sometime in early 2006 for unknown reasons. Spider is a landmine system that has been in development since 1999, for which the Pentagon has spent in excess of $130 million. Spider landmines differ from "conventional" mines because they are designed to detonate in a variety of ways. Spider mines can explode both through command-detonation (that is, when a human operator decides when to explode the mine) or through conventional victim-activation (where a victim detonates the weapon through stepping or picking up the mine). An operator will have the ability to turn the switch one way for command detonation and the other way for victim-detonation. The USCBL holds the position that landmines designed to permit victim-activation in any circumstance meet the definition of an indiscriminate weapon and should not be produced. We are very concerned about new production of landmines and will keep you updated when the decision on production of Spider is announced. US Veterans to Bring Baseball to Vietnam to Fight Mines
HANOI (AFP) - Baseball star Danny Graves will head a US delegation
to Vietnam next week to introduce the sport in the communist nation
along with an American veterans' organisation involved in demining. Sudan:
Landmines Taking Heavy Toll on Population KHARTOUM, 11 January (IRIN) - Bdr Aldeen Ahmed was 25 years old
the day he and a group of Sudanese soldiers walked into a booby-trapped
farm in Kapoeta, a town in the southern Sudanese state of Eastern
Equatoria that had been surrounded by rebels from the Sudan People's
Liberation Movement (SPLM). Ecuador's Hidden
Killers: Landmines in the Amazon TENIENTE ORTIZ, Ecuador - His shirt soaked in sweat, Wilson Chicaiza
swatted at the incessant bugs of the Amazon jungle as he described
how his land-mine detector had emitted a loud whine the day before. Egypt Seeks
to Resolve Landmine Legacy CAIRO (AFP) - A conference underlining the gravity of Egypt's
landmines problem kicked off in Cairo, with delegates appealing
for international support in the mine clearing effort. Clearing
Landmines The difficulty with minefield clearance is that those likely to be killed or maimed have neither political nor commercial leverage with those who are able to solve the problem (26 November 2005, p 26). Had the Sri Lankan or Cambodian situations existed in Sussex or Surrey they would have been eradicated, but the loss of a leg or even the occasional life of a rice farmer in the Far East does not create an imperative in the west. Your source suggests airships or satellites might be used as platforms for specialised mine detection equipment. A project called Mineseeker conducted a brief trial in Kosovo, and it was a qualified success. Mineseeker sought and obtained support from high-profile politicians, including Nelson Mandela. Along with Richard Branson, it approached Libya's Colonel Gaddafi to seek collaboration on clearing second-world-war mines from the Western Desert using airships and radar. But after flirting with the idea, Gaddafi lost interest, Mineseeker's funds ran out and work stopped. In 2000, representatives
of the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining were
invited to discuss demining at the celebrations marking Count Zeppelin's
airship achievements. Taking a different view from Mineseeker,
the Geneva group rejected the high-tech approach of airships with
ground- penetrating radar to detect mines. Instead, it advocated
cheaper equipment that could be made available to less-developed
countries, the most advanced of which resembles the bizarre flailing "funnies" used
to explode mines on the Normandy beaches in 1944. For more information on the US Campaign to Ban Landmines, go to www.banminesusa.org U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines To make a donation to the US Campaign to Ban Landmines go to: www.banminesusa.org/support/body.html and click on Donate. |
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