<s docid="FBIS4-18597" num="15"> Mines' Soon?"] [Excerpt] Bonn, 6 Apr -- After coordination with humanitarian relief organizations, the Federal Government is planning to ban the export of "antipersonnel mines".</s>

<s docid="FBIS4-18597" num="26"> Yet, so far, no more than 39 countries have signed the UN Convention banning the use of conventional arms that affect soldiers and civilians alike and injure them excessively.</s>

<s docid="FBIS4-18597" num="27"> The initiators are hoping that the planned export ban will contribute to an increase in the number of signatories and, at the same time, to extending the complementary protocol referring to the use of mines.</s>

<s docid="FT941-6884" num="8"> The International Committee of the Red Cross is leading the campaign for an outright prohibition of these indiscriminate and long-lived weapons which every month kill about 800 people and maim thousands, mostly civilians.</s>

<s docid="FT941-6884" num="14"> Short of a complete ban, the ICRC wants controls on mine manufacture, for instance to require self-destruct mechanisms.</s>

<s docid="FT941-5608" num="7"> The review of the international law governing the use of landmines, the UN's 1980 Inhumane Weapons Convention, beginning in Geneva this week, presents an opportunity to protect future generations of civilians from these terrible weapons.</s>

<s docid="FT941-5608" num="8"> The existing international law has numerous faults.</s>

<s docid="FT941-5608" num="9"> It only seeks to restrict the use of landmines, not their production and export.</s>

<s docid="FT932-13820" num="6"> THE International Committee of the Red Cross yesterday launched a campaign to focus arms control efforts on one of the most common and callous of weapons, the anti-personnel landmine.</s>

<s docid="FT932-13820" num="7"> A symposium aimed at increasing awareness about the effects of mines, reckoned to cause 800 deaths and 450 injuries every month, is being held this week in Montreux, Switzerland.</s>

<s docid="FT932-13820" num="11"> The aim is to build up pressure on governments ahead of a review of the 1981 United Nations convention covering 'inhumane' weapons.</s>

<s docid="FT932-13820" num="12"> A conference, which France's President Francois Mitterrand called for while visiting Cambodia in February, could be held at the end of the year.</s>

<s docid="FT932-13820" num="17"> The US Congress last October introduced a one-year moratorium on exports of anti-personnel mines.</s>

<s docid="FBIS4-33779" num="16"> A few minutes afterward, upon petition from Canada, the Assembly approved another resolution obliging the 34 nations to eradicate from the hemisphere the mines that still remain in a number of countries where armed conflicts took place, which can still cause casualties among the civilian population.</s>

<s docid="FT943-1029" num="16"> But the US president's principal initiative was to support the efforts of UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros Ghali to limit the use of anti-personnel mines.</s>

<s docid="FT943-11670" num="6"> The UK government, faced with mounting evidence of the tragedy caused by anti-personnel mines, has announced a ban on the export of all such weapons, except high-technology models which are primed to self-destruct.</s>

<s docid="FT943-11670" num="18"> Italy, the world's third largest exporter of anti-personnel mines, recently promised a blanket ban on their production and export.</s>

<s docid="FBIS3-940" num="13"> Article Type:BFN [Text] Pretoria March 15 SAPA -- A moratorium has been placed on the export and international marketing of landmines, Minister of Defence Kobie Coetsee announced in Pretoria on Tuesday [15 March].</s>

<s docid="FT944-9104" num="6"> An estimated 22 countries have reached a tentative agreement to ban international sales of anti-personnel landmines, US officials said yesterday.</s>

