DISARMAMENT: U.S. to Sign Landmine Ban by 2006 – Maybe

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, May 24 1998 (IPS) - President Bill Clinton has committed the United States to sign the global treaty banning anti-personnel landmines (APLs) by the year 2006 – but only if the Pentagon developed alternatives by that time.

In a letter to Senator Patrick Leahy, the foremost congressional foe of landmines, Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, declared that Washington would “sign the Ottawa Convention by 2006 if we succeed in identifying and fielding suitable alternatives to our anti-personnel landmines and mixed anti-tank systems by then.”

The Ottawa Convention refers to the treaty signed in the Canadian capital last December by more than 100 nations that outlawed the production, export and use of APLs – blamed for maiming or killing some 24,000 non-combatants worldwide every year.

APL foes praised the news of Clinton’s new commitment Friday when Leahy released details of the letter Clinton sent May 15.

“This is a significant step,” said Robert Muller, president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and a founder of the International Campaign to Bank Landmines (ICBL), which won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Leahy agreed and called the commitment “a major step toward the international ban. “I am greatly encouraged by this decision because I believe there no longer is any doubt that we will sign. As far as I am concerned, the only question is whether we get there before 2006.”

Despite tremendous pressure generated by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) mobilised around the ICBL and by some of Washington’s closest allies abroad, the administration refused to sign the Ottawa Convention due to strong opposition from the Pentagon. Clinton himself has changed U.S. policy on the issues several times since 1994. He first committed the United States to the goal of the “eventual elimination” of APLs back in 1994 although he insisted at the time that hi-tech, self-destroying “smart” mines should be exempted from any ban.

In 1996, Clinton called for the negotiation under U.N. auspices of a ban “as soon as possible” provided that Washington would still be able to use landmines in Korea and “smart” mines elsewhere.

At the same time, he said Washington would destroy most of its own stockpile of “dumb” APLs by 1999 and would observe a moratorium on exports of the weapon. APL foes, however, believed UN disarmament talks would be far too slow and urged a more rapid process to conclude a treaty outlawing the weapon by the end of 1997. The chief sponsor of this process was the Canadian foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy.

Clinton initially rejected U.S. participation in talks leading up to the treaty but, faced with growing pressure from the ICBL and anti-APL sentiment in Congress, he sent a delegation to take part in the final negotiating session Oslo last October.

At that meeting, Washington said it would sign a treaty provided that the Korean peninsula, where almost 40,000 U.S. troops were deployed close to the de-militarised zone, and certain kinds of “smart” mines were exempted from the ban.

Other countries involved in the process refused to bend to the U.S. demands. Axworthy complained that any exemptions to a total ban would “undermine the treaty” by creating a precedent that other nations who felt threatened by their neighbours would be quick to exploit.

Clinton combined his refusal to sign the treaty with some conciliatory gestures, including increasing U.S. aid for de-mining programmes in civil war-devastated countries, such as Angola, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Mozambique, by 25 percent. Washington had already earmarked 68 million dollars for de-mining programmes next year which he said was “as much as the rest of the world combined.”

He also said he was directing the Pentagon to develop alternatives to APLs so that by the year 2003, “we can end even the use of self-destruct landmines,” except in Korea, where the deadline would be extended to 2006. These commitments were reiterated in Berger’s letter to Leahy.

By committing Washington to sign the treaty, Clinton has taken one additional step, although the conditional language with which he hedged his pledge, and the fact that his term in office is due to end in Jan 2001, made the move less significant than it might have been.

The motivating factor also wasless benign than either the White House or Leahy wished. The Pentagon had become increasingly worried in recent weeks about a Leahy-sponsored law scheduled to take effect next February that would have placed a one-year moratorium on the use of APLs by the U.S. military. The law was originally enacted two years ago.

In a May 1 letter to the chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Pentagon chief William Cohen said the moratorium would deny US troops “the means to adequately defend our forces and our allies” if they came under attack during the moratorium period in key regional hotspots. He asked that the president be given the authority to waive the moratorium.

In subsequent negotiations, Leahy extracted the commitment to sign the Ottawa Convention in exchange for giving the president that waiver authority. “I agreed to this because the real issue is not whether we stop using landmines for a year, but whether we are committed to signing the treaty,” Leahy said Friday. “The treaty is what matters.”

“By committing to sign the treaty, the U.S. can now be part of the solution to the landmines crisis, not part of the problem,” agreed Stephen Goose, who heads the arms project at Human Rights Watch. “Now that the U.S. has committed to the treaty, it should do everything it can to convince hold-out states, such as Russia, China, Finland, Turkey, Israel and Egypt to sign.”

Goose and others expressed disappointment with Clinton’s time frame. He and Muller argued the Pentagon already has the technology to replace both “dumb” and “smart” mines, including those which are used to protect anti-tank mines, whose principal purpose is to find and prevent enemy forces from advancing. These included a combination drone aircraft, satellites, ground sensors, and specialised infantry and helicopter-mounted rapid-fire guns – much of which was deployed in Korea.

“It is our opinion that alternatives to landmines for the U.S. arsenal already exist, and there is a tremendous amount of documentation – including by the Pentagon – that backs up that assertion,” said Scott Nathanson, acting director of Demilitarisation for Democracy. “The United States can sign the Ottawa Treaty right now, without threatening the security of US troops.”