Chechnya said deadliest area for mines

By JONATHAN D. SALANT
The Associated Press
9/9/2003, 12:16 p.m. CT

WASHINGTON (AP) — More people were killed by land mines during the continuing conflict in Chechnya last year than anywhere else in the world, a watchdog group said Tuesday.

The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, reported that 5,695 people were killed by land mines in Chechnya in 2002, more than double the 2,140 casualties a year earlier. The group said Russian troops and Chechen rebels both use mines in the breakaway Russian region.

"Fighting, replete with massive violations of human rights and laws of war, including widespread use of mines by both sides, continues," the group said.

Overall, the group reported progress in its campaign. For example, 69 countries have destroyed 52 million mines in recent years.

"Progress on the land mine issue remains firm," said Jody Williams, who shared the Nobel prize with the group she helped create. "Use is down dramatically. The amount of money given for mine clearance is up."

A massive mine-clearing effort in Afghanistan is having the desired effect, lowering the toll from mines from 1,445 in 2001 to 1,286 last year, still the world's second-deadliest toll.

About $64 million was spent last year on mine-clearing operations, four times greater than in 2001, after U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban government.

The group said 136 countries, including Afghanistan, had ratified a treaty to ban land mines. The agreement awaits ratification in another 12. The United States, Russia and China are among the 47 countries that have yet to sign the treaty.

The Bush administration is reviewing the U.S. policy toward land mines. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines said the administration had stockpiled mines to use in the recent Iraq war but did not deploy them.

Still, the number of reported deaths from mines in Iraq, which continued to deploy them until the U.S. invasion earlier this year, rose from 360 in 2001 to 457 in 2002.

Six governments used land mines in 2002, down from nine in 2001 and 13 in 2000, the group said. This year, only two countries — Myanmar and Russia — continued to use mines on a regular basis, the group said.

An official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government disputed the casualty figures, though he said authorities do not have their own numbers, the Interfax news agency reported.

"I think that the organization's data are extremely exaggerated," Interfax quoted Chechnya's Deputy Interior Minister Akhmed Dakayev as saying. "We do not have any separate statistics related to land-mine victims, but official data indicate that far less people were killed or injured (by land mines) in 2002, as compared with the figure provided in the report."

The number of deaths in Myanmar, also known as Burma, doubled from 57 in 2001 to 114 in 2002. The Burmese military has been accused of forcing people to walk in front of patrols in suspected minefields, so-called atrocity de-mining.

Another country that experienced a sharp increase in deaths was Colombia, where both rebel forces and paramilitary troops use mines. The number of casualties rose from 216 in 2001 to 530 in 2002.

The report found that 11,700 people around the world were reported killed by mines last year, including 2,649 children and 192 women. The advocacy group said the total is higher because civilians are killed in areas with no help and no way to communicate, so their deaths are not reported.

Nine of the world's 15 current land mine producers are in Asia: China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam. Nepal was added to the list this year after the government in Katmandu acknowledged producing mines.

___

On the Net:

International Campaign to Ban Landmines: http://www.icbl.org