EDITORIAL: `Weapons of evil'

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 28(IHT/Asahi: November 29,2004)

Greater effort is needed to stamp out land mines.

Anti-personnel land mines are not designed to kill. Rather, these concealed bombs are engineered to blow off the arms or legs of anyone who unknowingly treads on them, leaving the victim crippled. For this reason, the cruel products are known as ``weapons of evil.''

Simple and cheap to produce, land mines are normally buried in large quantities, with many civilians and children also falling victim.

Scattered land mines retain their firepower for many years, continuing to threaten the populace even after peace has been restored. They also pose a serious obstacle to reconstructing economies.

Five years have passed since the introduction of a treaty that seeks to banish these cruel weapons from the face of the Earth-the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition and the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and Their Destruction.

According to a report by the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, the nongovernmental organization awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, 143 countries already participate in the Ottawa Convention. As a result, some 37.3 million land mines have been disposed of during the past five years in 65 countries, including Japan.

Though about 26,000 people were killed or wounded yearly by land mines during the 1990s, the NGO estimates that level has now fallen to between 15,000 and 20,000. Clearly, the convention is providing results.

But challenges remain. The signatory countries are scheduled to hold the convention's first review conference starting Monday in Nairobi, Kenya. A five-year action plan will also be adopted.

The first theme for the conference is to expand the Convention's signature nations. There are still about 200 million land mines in 67 countries-most of them belonging to China, Russia, the United States and other nonsignatory nations.

During his administration, U.S. President Bill Clinton pledged his nation would sign the Ottawa Convention in 2006 on condition an alternative means to land mines was developed. Under President George W. Bush, however, that idea has gone nowhere. While this reflects tensions in the Korean Peninsula, we sincerely hope the Bush administration will again consider signing the pact.

In Russia, although former President Boris Yeltsin expressed an intent to sign the treaty, there have been no further movements in that direction by the subsequent administration of Vladimir Putin. China has also taken a wary approach, with no prospects for Beijing to sign the convention at present. Considering China's long national border, the logic follows that the Chinese are not likely give in at the drop of a hat.

The only real way to break this deadlock is to ratchet up efforts to persuade the holdouts that joining the convention will serve their own interests in the long run. Russia, mired in the Chechen problem, can see that sustained use of land mines within its own borders will only damage the quality of life and liberty for its own population.

The second theme of the convention-review conference is to continue to pump up international support for removing land mines and providing relief for victims. Developing nations fatigued by long years of interregional and civil conflicts lack the energy and resources to directly deal with land mines even if peace is restored. To increase the number of developing countries signed to the convention, it will be important to expand support for powers to the pact.

Thanks in part to help from late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, Japan furnished 10 million yen in assistance for the convention during the five years through 2002.

This support continues, but it lacks a long-term vision. Some critics say Tokyo has failed on this front. They say, for instance, that funds provided to remove land mines in Afghanistan and other countries has been simply slashed from the budgets for Africa and other regions.

Japan should show firm resolve to continue to fight the land-mine problem. That leadership would help win greater acceptance worldwide for the movement to scrap and ban land mines. We must remember that even at this very moment, innocent people somewhere in the world are being killed or maimed by anti-personnel land mines-weapons of evil.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 28(IHT/Asahi: November 29,2004)