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USA won't sign landmine treaty By Ivan Oransky The Bush administration disappointed anti-landmine activists last week (Feb 27) when it announced it would not sign the Ottawa Convention's 1997 Mine Ban Treaty by 2006, as promised by President Bill Clinton in May, 1998. The USA will not stop using persistent landmines--also known as "dumb landmines" because they cannot be deactivated--until 2010. "The Ottawa Convention offers no protection for innocent civilians in post-conflict areas from the harm caused by persistent antivehicle landmines, and it would take away a needed means of protection from our men and women in uniform who may be operating in harm's way", Lincoln Bloomfield, the US assistant secretary of state for political military affairs, said at a briefing on Feb 27. Bloomfield said that the USA will increase spending by 50%--to US$70 million--on clearing mines no longer considered useful militarily. "All of the many medical, humanitarian, human rights, veterans, and religious organisations that make up the US Campaign to Ban Landmines (USCBL) are really very profoundly disappointed in the new landmine policies that were announced today", Gina Coplon-Newfield, coordinator of the USCBL, which is organised by Physicians for Human Rights, told The Lancet. "They bring us backward on this issue." The treaty has been signed by 150 countries. In 1998, when Clinton pledged to sign it given certain conditions, Korea was cited as one area where landmines would be a deterrent. "Given the Bush administration's position on several other international treaties, we were skeptical of what might happen", said Coplon-Newfield. "But we didn't expect that the policies would be this bad, or this dangerous." "They focus on the need for these so-called smart mines", she said. "In fact, they're not so smart [because] they can't tell difference between the foot of a soldier and foot of a child." Such [self-destructing US] mines tend to be spread by air, and some don't deactivate properly, she said. Landmines kill [and injure] 15-20 000 people per year, according to the USCBL. About a third of the victims are children and 80% are civilians. "Most mine victims are in countries where there is little access to medical care", Coplon-Newfield added. "There is [often] no access to blood, [artificial] limbs, or doctors who've been trained on how to perform amputation, or things as simple as pain medication." |
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For more on the Mine Ban Treaty, go to www.icbl.org |