Military

DATE=2/27/04

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=U-S / LANDMINE POLICY (L-O)

NUMBER=2-313600

BYLINE=DAVID GOLLUST

DATELINE=STATE DEPARTMENT

VOICED AT:

INTRO: The Bush administration Friday announced a new landmine policy that includes an end to the use of low-tech conventional mines by the U-S military by 2010 and a big increase in spending on humanitarian mine-clearing. But the United States will remain outside the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel mines, and the policy is drawing criticism from anti-mine activists. V-O-A's David Gollust reports from the State Department.

TEXT: The new policy, announced after a lengthy review, seeks to strike a balance between the desire of the U-S armed forces to retain some landmine capability, especially on the Korean peninsula, and humanitarian concerns about civilian casualties from low-tech mines that can remain buried and lethal for decades.

Under its terms, the U-S armed forces will be barred from using conventional mines -- those without advanced self-destruct mechanisms -- by 2010.

But there will be no phase-out of the use of the so-called "smart" landmines, those with timing devices to automatically defuse the explosives within a matter of hours or days.

In addition, the United States will increase spending on humanitarian mine-clearing projects around the world by 50 percent for the 2005 fiscal year to 70-million dollars annually.

The policy in effect endorses the Clinton administration's decision not to join the 1997 Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. But it is more restrictive than the past administration's policy in at least one aspect, in that the United States will foreswear the use of conventional anti-vehicle mines after 2010.

On the other hand, it scraps the goal of the Clinton White House to have the United States become a signatory of the Ottawa treaty by 2006.

At a news briefing, the State Department's point-man for landmine policy, Assistant Secretary of State Lincoln Bloomfield, defended the decision to permit the open-ended use of the "smart mines" with self-destruct mechanisms.

He said they have "some continuing utility" for U-S forces around the world and have an apparently perfect safety record with regard to civilian casualties.

/// BLOOMFIELD ACT ///

The fact of the matter is that the safety devices on these landmines, the self-destruct and self-de-active features, have been tested 60-thousand times with no failure. So, it's a perfect testing record. As the special representative on this issue, who has been doing this now for three years and has had an interest before-hand, I have yet to encounter a single case where a self-destruct, self de-activate landmine in the hands of the United States armed forces has ever been tied to a civilian, innocent civilian casualty in the world.

/// END ACT ///

Mr. Bloomfield stressed that the United States is by far the largest provider of mine-clearing aid to countries around the world, having allocated nearly 800-million dollars to 46 countries since 1993 to clear old minefields and assist mine victims.

He said the program is having some success and that world-wide civilian casualties from mine detonations have declined from more than 25-thousand a year a decade ago to about 10-thousand a year now.

The new policy has drawn at best a mixed reaction from anti-mine advocates.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, a leading opponent of mines in Congress, said there were some positive aspects to the Bush administration's decision but that overall, it is a "deeply disappointing step backward."

An arms control spokesman for Human Rights Watch, Stephen Goose, praised the plan to increase U-S spending on mine-clearing, but said the United States is isolated in its insistence on the continued use of some mines by the armed forces.

The advocacy group Landmine Action said the policy is a step backward that will undermine the Ottawa treaty. (SIGNED)

NEB/DAG/KL/TW