MONDAY, 01 MARCH 2004

501 U.S. Announces New Worldwide Landmine Policy
(FR) (Assistant Secretary of State Bloomfield briefs February 27) (920)
502 Byliner: A New U.S. Policy on Landmines
(Op-ed by Special Representative for Mine Action Lincoln Bloomfield) (850)
503 West African Polio Campaign Inoculates 60 Million Children
(U.N. health agency emphasizes progress, despite holdouts in Nigeria) (580)

*AEF501 02/27/2004
U.S. Announces New Worldwide Landmine Policy
(FR) (Assistant Secretary of State Bloomfield briefs February 27) (920)
By David Anthony Denny
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- In a sweeping policy change, the United States will accelerate its efforts to end the global humanitarian problem of landmines by eliminating all of its non-self destructing landmines and by increasing funding for mine action programs worldwide, a State Department official says.

Lincoln Bloomfield, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs and the special representative of the president and secretary of state for mine action, told reporters February 27 that the new policy "serves two important goals: a strong push to end the humanitarian risks posed by landmines, and ensuring that our military has the defensive capabilities it needs to protect our own and friendly forces on the battlefield."

The new policy, Bloomfield said, has several components:

-- After 2010 the United States will use neither long-lasting or "persistent" anti-personnel nor persistent anti-vehicle landmines;

-- Within one year the United States will no longer have any undetectable landmines in its inventory;

-- The United States will push to develop alternatives within the decade to its current persistent anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines, incorporating enhanced self-destructing, self-deactivating technologies and control mechanisms;

-- The administration is asking Congress to increase the budget for global humanitarian mine actions programs in the 2005 budget to $70 million; and

-- The administration will lead an international effort to conclude a worldwide ban on the sale or export of all persistent mines with minor exceptions for training purposes.

Following a long review, the Bush administration arrived at its position, Bloomfield said, drawing on 16 years of U.S. experience assisting mine-affected countries around the world. He pointed out that the United States is already "the world's largest contributor to humanitarian mine action," he said, having spent nearly $800 million in 46 countries in the past 10 years for landmine clearance, mine risk education and survivor assistance.

Bloomfield pointed out that there have been at least 300,000 innocent victims of landmines, with some 10,000 more added annually. An estimated 60 million landmines remain deployed in 60 countries around the world, he added.

The new policy, Bloomfield said, is focused on persistent landmines -- those that remain active for years or decades until something or someone sets them off -- almost always with tragic results.

"What we have seen, very simply, is that the landmines harming innocent men, women and children, and their livestock, are persistent landmines," he said. "Nor are these lingering hazards caused solely by the anti-personnel category of persistent landmines. We find that persistent anti-vehicle landmines are left behind following conflicts, posing deadly risks to innocent people and requiring remediation by ourselves and the many other parties engaged in humanitarian mine action."

Bloomfield said the deployed persistent mines causing the annual toll of deaths and injuries "are not mines left behind by U.S. forces, the only potential exception being U.S. mines left behind during the Vietnam conflict more than three decades ago. ... The U.S. military already follows the strictures of the Amended Mines Protocol and the Convention on Conventional Weapons, which specifies obligations to mark, monitor and clear persistent minefields after hostilities end."

While the new policy emphasizes doing away with persistent landmines, it conversely emphasizes the use of non-persistent landmines. "These munitions have reliable features that limit the life of the munition to a matter of hours or a few days, by which time it self-destructs," Bloomfield said. "And in the unlikely event the self-destruct features fail, the battery will run out within 90 days, rendering it inert, and these batteries always expire," he said.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability Operations Joseph Collins, who briefed with Bloomfield, provided the rationale for retaining and deploying landmines.

"It is the considered judgment of our senior military commanders," Collins said, "that they need the defensive capabilities that landmines can provide. The capabilities enable a commander to shape the battlefield to his or her advantage. They deny the enemy freedom to maneuver his forces. They enhance the effectiveness of other weapons systems, such as small arms, artillery or combat aircraft."

Landmines, Collins continued, "act as force multipliers, allowing us to fight and win with ... fewer forces ... against numerically superior opponents; and they also protect our forces, saving the lives of our men and women in uniform. At present, no other weapon system exists that provides all of these capabilities."

Bloomfield also addressed the issue of the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines. Continuing the policy of the previous administration, he said the United States "will not become a party to the Ottawa Treaty."

"The Ottawa Convention offers no protection for innocent civilians in post-conflict areas from the harm caused by persistent anti-vehicle 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," Bloomfield said.

There are two types of landmines: anti-personnel and anti-vehicle. But both anti-personnel and anti-vehicle mines can be divided further into persistent and non-persistent. The Ottawa Convention, in banning all anti-personnel landmines, fails completely to address the great problem of anti-vehicle landmines, while unnecessarily prohibiting the use of non-persistent anti-personnel landmines. Bloomfield said the United States will continue to work internationally through the "Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons to ... end the ... indiscriminate use of all landmines."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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*AEF502 02/27/2004
Byliner: A New U.S. Policy on Landmines
(Op-ed by Special Representative for Mine Action Lincoln Bloomfield) (850)

(This op-ed column by Lincoln Bloomfield, who is special representative of the president and secretary of state for mine action and assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, was published in the Financial Times February 27 and is in the public domain. No republication restrictions.)

(begin byliner)

America's Promise On Landmines
By Lincoln Bloomfield

The Bush administration will today announce a new policy on landmines that lie on or beneath the ground, ready to explode, long after cessation of the hostilities that prompted their use. Indiscriminate use of persistent landmines by undisciplined armies, irresponsible governments and non-state actors has maimed tens of thousands of children and created widespread problems across the globe that have reached crisis proportions in several nations within the last decade. The US shares common cause with all who wish to undo this harmful legacy of conflict.

US military forces currently have persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in their inventory. Under the new policy, after 2010, the US will no longer use persistent landmines of any type, on any battlefield, for any purpose, anywhere in the world. Between now and then, use of persistent landmines will require presidential authorisation.

After 2010, any landmines used by US forces will be rendered inert after a determined time period, measured in hours or days, not years or decades. The technology to do this exists now and has been proved, with no failures in more than 60,000 tests. The explosive power of our mines - anti-personnel and anti-vehicle - will be confined to the duration of hostilities.

Under this new policy, within a year the US will discontinue forever the use of any mines that are non-detectable to conventional metal detectors. Again, the US is the first major military power to make such a complete and unconditional commitment, one that covers all types of landmine.

Additionally, President George W. Bush has directed a 50 per cent increase in the Department of State's 2005 humanitarian mine action budget over baseline levels of fiscal year 2003, for a new total of $70m per year, nearly twice that of the next largest donor.

This is a bold and sensible policy, one that breaks with formulations of the past. No other country has adopted a policy that can meet these standards of eschewing persistent landmines of all kinds, assuring detectability of any landmines used and strongly supporting humanitarian mine action programmes worldwide.

The "Ottawa Convention", to which the US is not a signatory, prohibits the use of anti-personnel landmines, but is silent on the entire class of more powerful anti-vehicle landmines. The fact that the US and the Ottawa Convention's drafters could not agree on terms in 1997 obscured the fact that we share a common commitment to end the harmful effects of landmines.

Nevertheless, many will ask how the new US policy differs from the Ottawa Convention. The convention's ban on all anti-personnel landmines would have denied our military the needed capabilities currently provided by mines that leave no enduring hazard on the battlefield. The president's new policy will end the use of landmines that are persistent, non-metallic, or both, while the Ottawa Convention permits landmines that are powerful enough to destroy a vehicle, including persistent and undetectable versions and those with "anti-handling devices" that can be triggered by people.

By ending the use of both persistent anti-vehicle and persistent anti-personnel mines, the US becomes the first big military power to take such comprehensive measures to protect civilians from post-conflict hazards, beyond protections afforded under any treaty.

Policy approaches may differ, and deserve to be discussed, but the people and communities victimised by deadly mines left behind after conflict deserve the full co-operation of all who support mine action.

No country does more than the US to support humanitarian mine action, including landmine clearance, mine risk education and victim assistance.

The US funded the first demining operations in Afghanistan in 1988 and has since been the world's largest donor, providing almost $800m to clear mines and help civilians in 46 countries or territories.

The programmes being increased under the new policy promote stability by allowing refugees to return home and giving communities a chance to rebuild their economies.

This new policy responds with vision to the problem of persistent landmines, avoiding recriminations over past policy disputes, demonstrating America's humanitarian commitment and all the while preserving needed military capability. We welcome other countries that may share this vision by curtailing their trade in and use of all persistent mines. Above all, we look forward to redoubling efforts with the international community, including governments, international and non-governmental organisations and the private sector, to end the humanitarian crisis caused by these weapons once and for all and to ensure that all people may walk the earth in safety.

(Lincoln Bloomfield is Special Representative of the President and Secretary of State for Mine Action and Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.)

(end byliner)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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*AEF503 02/27/2004
West African Polio Campaign Inoculates 60 Million Children
(U.N. health agency emphasizes progress, despite holdouts in Nigeria) (580)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington --The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that participation in a massive polio immunization campaign in West Africa has been "strong," despite the refusal by two northern Nigerian states to allow inoculations.

WHO spokesperson Melissa Corkum said February 27 that final data won't be available for several more weeks, but she anticipates that the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) has come close to achieving its goal of immunizing 63 million children in 10 West African states during the campaign conducted February 23-27.

"There is good news," Corkum said in a Washington File interview. "Thirty five of thirty seven (Nigerian) states did go ahead with the campaign," allowing infants and young children to receive vaccine to prevent the crippling viral disease.

According to press reports, Islamic leaders in Nigeria's Kano and Zamfara states have voiced concerns about the safety of the vaccine, alleging that it can cause infertility and HIV/AIDS. The vaccine has been used widely throughout the world, and WHO is certain of its safety. Still, Corkum said further safety tests are being conducted on the vaccine currently to allay those concerns with the hope that the hesitant states will participate in another West African immunization campaign set for late March.

As National Immunization Days unfolded this week, a case of paralytic polio was confirmed in Ivory Coast, more than three years after that West African nation was believed to be free of the disease. WHO is investigating whether the recently reported case is linked to viruses that spread out of Nigeria in 2003 after local authorities suspended immunization campaigns.

Polio has resurfaced in seven nations in west and central Africa previously declared polio-free. In a February 20 statement, WHO officials said the Nigerian refusal to participate in widespread immunization programs was the cause of the virus' resurgence in neighboring nations.

The GPEI is a joint effort of WHO, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the public service organization Rotary International.

UNICEF Director Carol Bellamy dismissed the Nigerian suspicions about the vaccine in a February 25 statement. "It is unforgivable to allow still more children to be paralyzed because of further delay and baseless rumors," said Bellamy in a statement issued from UNICEF's Geneva headquarters. "We call on these authorities to immediately rejoin the polio eradication effort, which promises to be one of Africa's greatest success stories in public health. Nigerian leaders must take this opportunity now, or answer to their children."

GPEI has been under way since the late 1980s and aspires to rid the world of the polio virus by 2005. When the initiative was started, an estimated 350,000 cases occurred annually. In 2003, fewer than 750 cases of the disease were detected worldwide, according to WHO data, and the virus was considered endemic -- that is, naturally prevalent in a particular area -- in only six nations. Because of the highly infectious nature of the polio virus, GPEI officials have long said that polio must be eradicated everywhere, by all nations, if it is to be eradicated at all.

Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan are the six remaining countries with endemic virus. Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo are the eight nations where the disease has reemerged. With 23 cases, Chad has experienced the largest outbreak.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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