BANNING ANTI-PERSONNEL LAND MINES:
THE OTTAWA PROCESS AND BEYOND

Panel discussion at the United Nations, 21 October 1997. Panelists:
Bob Sherman, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency;
Robert Lawson, Dept. of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Canada;
Stephen Goose, Human Rights Watch;
Amb. Johan Lovald of Norway;
Jody Williams, International Campaign to Ban Landmines;
Amb. John Campbell, Delegation of Australia

JIM WURST, Council on Economic Priorities, Chairman: Welcome to this panel on anti-personnel landmines. We have a distinguished panel: Robert Sherman, of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Jody Williams, the coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines; Robert Lawson, of the Foreign Ministry of Canada; Steve Goose, of Human Rights Watch Arms Project and Ambassador Johan Lovald of Norway. Ambassador John Campbell of Australia, Australia s representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, will be here shortly. He s the Special Coordinator on the question of landmines at this past 1997 session of the Conference on Disarmament.

We will start with Bob Sherman. Bob Sherman began his career in public policy as a legislative assistant to Senator George McGovern, opposing the Viet Nam war. Since that time, he has served as national security staff specialist to Senator Tom Harken and Congressmen Bob Leggett, Tom Downey, Bob Carr, and Les O Coyne. He was the principal staffer on the 1995 law banning the flight tests of anti-satellite weapons and a 1988 amendment banning flight tests of depressed trajectory ballistic missiles. His other projects on Congressional staff have included the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the MX and Trident 2 missiles, and the nuclear counter-force strategies, which he opposed, and the nuclear freeze and Start II, which he supported.

Bob joined ACDA in 1993 as the Director of Advanced Projects. He has served as ACDA s chief representative on landmines and was the deputy chief of the US delegation to the Convention on Conventional Weapons and the recent Oslo Conference.

ROBERT SHERMAN: Thank you. You may be wondering with a lefty peacenik background, that Jim indicated in introducing me, how come I m here to explain why the United States government is not going to sign the Ottawa Treaty to Ban Land Mines? Hear me out.

The subject today is banning landmines, but a more fundamental principle is that people are more important than things. While banning landmines is what we need to talk about, the more fundamental objective is to save civilians from being killed or maimed by anti-personnel landmines. In many respects, that s the same proposition stated two different ways; in some respects, it s a different proposition and leads you down different courses. That s what I m going to be talking about.

Landmines are being dealt with in three venues. One is the Ottawa Process, which you all know about. That s a very firm, clear-cut process. The objective is to have a total APM ban signed in December of 1997 and it appears that that objective will certainly be met.

The second process is the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW). This is a treaty which deals with a number of subjects. It went into force in the early 80s. One of its protocols deals with anti-personnel landmines. It was a very weak and ineffectual provision. So, during the 1990s it was renegotiated and an amendment was concluded in May 1996, a very useful amendment. Eleven countries have ratified it. Twenty are needed for entry into force, and we expect that will probably happen by about the end of the year.

The third process is the Conference on Disarmament. This is the continuing body for negotiating multilateral arms control agreements. It's the body that negotiated the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban. It has spent the last year trying to begin negotiations on anti-personnel landmines and for various reasons hasn't been able to. John Campbell will have a lot more to say since he is the Special Coordinator for anti-personnel landmines of the CD.

Let's ask ourselves, what are these things that we re trying to ban? What is there that distinguishes an anti-personnel landmine from another weapon?

Three possibilities are commonly suggested.Landmines do very bad things to humans. They kill, maim, cripple, disfigure. But that in itself doesn t distinguish a landmine from any other kind of weapon, because most weapons of war do exactly the same thing: bombs, shells, missiles, even bullets.

I frequently hear it said that landmines are indiscriminate; they can t tell the difference between a child or a soldier. That s true, but it s also true of other weapon of war. The shell, bomb, missile that can tell the difference between a child and a soldier has yet to be invented. The military would love it if it were but it doesn t exist and won t in the foreseeable future.

The unique, evil aspect of anti-personnel landmines is a matter of time. Alone among all of the weapons of war mines by design remain active and lethal, not just at the time they are used, but for hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades after they are emplaced. The garden variety anti-personnel landmine will have a life of thirty years, roughly. Very few conflicts last for thirty years. This means that the mines are staying in the ground waiting to kill, maim and destroy somebody in behalf of a cause that s long gone, moved away, stopped, forgotten about. Time is the essence of the problem.

The time during which anti-personnel landmines are lethal isn t the same for all mines; there are very, very large differences. The typical garden variety, simple, cheap, anti- personnel mine that lasts 30 years, makes up most of the world s inventories and most of the mines in the ground today. These mines are basically like mousetraps. There's a spring, the spring is cocked, the mine is put on the ground. Sooner or later somebody steps on it. The spring is released the firing pin hits the explosive, the mine explodes. If nobody steps on it, there are no moving parts to wear out, no electronics to decay. The mine just sits there and lasts for a very long time. Eventually, because of climatic effects or corrosion or whatever, it'll stop working; but that, as we said, can be decades. These mines have to be used militarily in very large numbers, because it takes a long time to emplace them one at a time. And, if you are an army commander and an enemy force is coming at you, they might come this way, they might come that way. You have to put mine fields down in advance in every one of those places. That means a lot of mines, a lot of mines left behind and a lot of civilian casualities.

These mines are frequently reusable. They're armed by removing a pin; and somebody who knows what he s doing can put a pin back in. He can pick up the mine, take it with him, it s disarmed. Then he can use it against you. They are a major, unique humanitarian problem because they last so long.

There is a second type of mine, a short duration mine, which makes up ninety per cent of the United States inventory. These mines self-destruct, that is, they blow themselves up in a very short period of time. There is a timer in it, usually several timers for redundancy. When the timer matures, the mine blows itself up. If that fails, the mine s powered by a battery and the battery dies. There s no such thing as a battery that never dies; it dies in a predictable period of time. So, in a relatively short period of time, that mine becomes harmless.

If all of the mines that had been used in the last thirty years were of this type, there would not be a humanitarian landmine crisis today. And, we wouldn't be having this meeting.

Self-destructing and self-deactivating mines, despite anything you may have heard to the contrary, are extremely reliable, essentially one hundred per cent. These mines are delivered, in most cases, remotely, that is, by artillery or airplanes or helicopters, which means they can be put down very rapidly. You don t need to think, Is the enemy going to be coming here or here? I got to put mine fields down in every one of those places. You wait until he s very close and then you put them down just in one place. So, the number of mines that are needed, if they are remotely delivered and self-destructing, is much smaller.

These mines are not a unique humanitarian problem. I m not saying they re not a humanitarian problem at all. They are. If somebody steps on a mine, a self-destructing mine before it s self-destructed, the result will be a tragedy. But, the humanitarian problem created by these mines is on the same order as that created by other weapons of war, not much greater, as is the case with long-life mines.

These are the types of mines the United States has. The large majority of them self- destruct in four hours. These are the so-called ADAM mines, area denial anti-personnel munitions. Thirty-six of them are delivered by one artillery shell. Of the remainder, the majority self-destruct in two days. We do have about a million, old-fashioned long-life mines.

And we also have what are called mixed munitions, that is, anti-tank and anti-personnel units that are packaged in the same bomb or the same canister. They can't be separated. The only purpose of the anti-personnel units is to protect the anti-tank units. At the Oslo Conference, the United States offered to give up all of these and to keep only the mixed munitions, if the Ottawa Treaty would be changed to accommodate that. The conference felt that would not be acceptable, so we are going our separate ways in a friendly way.

I don't mean to mislead you and suggest that, if our position had been accepted, we would have been limited to this number of mines. No. We probably would have made more of them, probably going up to five or six hundred thousand. But it would have been only of this type of mine and all these others would have been gone.

Now let's look at the three arms control venues and compare their strengths and weaknesses. I m going to be very clear about one thing. My view, and the view of the US government, is that each of these three venues should be all it can be, that there is no reason for any feeling of rivalry or competition among them. Each has its own separate and useful function.

The Ottawa Process: the great advantage of the Ottawa Process is it s fast for two reasons, one, because it established procedures whereby decisions could be taken by majority vote, rather than requiring consensus and, two, because the countries that attended the conference, with one exception, my own, had a very similar view of what this treaty should be. So there wasn t a large range of disagreement among the countries that were there. The negotiations at the Oslo session were essentially finished in a week and a half.

It has the disadvantage, though, of being light in terms of its membership. Now, I m not talking about numbers of countries. There s a very large number of countries that are signing on to the Ottawa Process, ninety at last count, and if Japan signs on, that would make ninety-one. But, in terms of representation, there are many more people and many more mines outside of the Ottawa Process than inside. And that ll have to be dealt with somewhere else.

The Ottawa Process countries make up twenty-seven per cent of the world s population, twenty-nine per cent if Japan comes in, and, while these figures are a little hard to pin down, probably a smaller percentage than that of the world s landmine stocks. The Ottawa Process is very useful, primarily in that it brings in a large number of African countries that are severely mine-impacted and have not been brought in by any of the other processes. But, we should be clear that there is a great deal to be done after Ottawa and outside of Ottawa.

The CCW: it requires consensus, so it didn t move as quickly as Ottawa, but we were able to get consensus and get a fairly substantial treaty completed in 1996. That s why I say, medium speed. And this treaty includes the major landmine producers, exporters and stockpilers, primarily: China, Russia, India, Pakistan. CCW provides that anti-personnel mines that are not marked and monitored, that is, not in fields that are marked and monitored and civilians excluded, have to self-destruct and self-deactivate. They have to be detectable, that is, they have to have metal in them and they cannot be exported to sub-national entities or to countries that are not subscribing to the principles of CCW.

This is very important. Think for a minute about the pictures you ve seen in the newspapers, the terrible pictures of the Cambodian children with legs and arms missing from anti- personnel landmines. In many cases, those mines were produced and exported by China and used by rebel forces who don t follow any international agreements. And, the only way to keep mines away from those rebel forces is with a prohibition on exporting mines to them that s followed by the major mine countries. CCW does that. The Ottawa Process, at this point at least, does not do it.

The Conference on Disarmament: it is very, very slow. The reason is that it requires consensus to even begin negotiations, and we have been unable to get that. We spent a year trying; we ve been blocked to some extent by the countries that don t want to have a mine ban and also to some extent by the Ottawa Process countries that didn t want a rival process to gain momentum. I m hoping that after the Ottawa Convention is signed in December that that problem will no longer exist.

The United States has about eleven million anti-personnel mines. A more meaningful measure than numbers of mines is numbers of mine-years. One mine-year is one mine which, when emplaced in the ground, is active for one year. So an old-fashioned mine that has a thirty- year lifetime would be thirty mine-years. A four-hour mine would be a very small fraction of a mine-year. Now, using mine-years, which is a good, basic measure of the relative risk to civilians, here s how that world stacks up: The US self-destructing mines, which is what a great deal of fuss has been made about recently, are very, very small. The US total is larger, but still relatively small. The Ottawa member-nations are much more significant; but a huge number of mine-years are owned by Russia and China. In the long run, the measure of our success will be what we do to reduce the number of mine-years that are going to go into the ground. And that means we have to bring in other countries over, including India and Pakistan.

There has been a bit of contention recently over the issue of should we be concentrating on demining the mines that are already in the ground or should we be concentrating on mine-control or mine bans to prevent new mines from going into the ground. And Jody has been the subject of some fairly heated attack from some of the demining organizations. I think that s wrong. There should not be that kind of disagreement. It s like saying, Should you do research on cancer or should you do research on heart disease? We need to do both. There s no sense in which they should be regarded as competitive.

And one final thought. I m going to make a plea that we treat this not as a political issue but as a humanitarian issue. Now, in politics we all know that many times we start with our conlcusion, which is dictated for whatever reason, and then we select our evidence and squeeze the facts to make them fit into that conclusion. Here we re dealing with real people s lives and limbs, the civilians who will be killed or maimed by anti-personnel landmines, if we don t do the right thing, or the civilians who may be killed or maimed by the lack of anti-personnel landmines, if the soldiers who are trying to protect them don t have the mines to use. We need to balance all that and we need to do it not in a prejudged way but by beginning with the evidence, proceeding through reason to a conlcusion. And I hope we ll all do that today and the rest of the time we are dealing with this issue.

JIM WURST: The next speaker is Bob Lawson. He is in the non-proliferatiion and disarmament division of Canada s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He s been very involved throughout with Canada s leadership role in the landmines issue. Some of you have heard him speak at some of our earlier panels on the issue.

BOB LAWSON, Canadian delegation: Thank you. It s great to be back. I was here last year around this time. It was a very exciting time. We had just finished the first Ottawa Conference. I may have looked a little nervous because our foreign minister had laid his challenge before the world to come back in a year to sign a ban treaty. And I d like to say that we knew exactly how we were going to do it, but I wouldn t be honest. I was quite nervous. But, a year later, what a difference a year makes. It s been an incredible coalition effort for the past year. And we have now a complete and total ban treaty one year later. I think it s an incredible accomplishment.

I d like to begin perhaps by addressing some of the comments made by the first panelist. Mr. Sherman posed three questions. If one puts it as he did in the humanitarian framework -- is it a question of whether these mines are brutal? Is it a question of whether these mines are indiscriminate? Or is it a matter of time? Can one draw a distinction between long-life mines and short-life mines, so-called smart mines?

I would argue that in fact it s all three. Landmines are brutal. And I cannot at all agree with Mr. Sherman s comments that they are brutal in the same measure as other weapons of war. Weapons of war are certainly brutal but there s a lot of objective, empirical evidence to suggest that these weapons are more brutal that other weapons.

The Red Cross is doing extensive research in the field. These are the people who most often see landmine victims first, as they are brought in from the remote parts of the world, where they often are unfortunately affected by mines. They have discovered that the number of surgical interventions required to treat anti-personnel wounds is double that required to treat wounds from other weapons of war, bullets or mortar shells. The effect of a blast mine, by blowing dirt and fragments up into a wound under great pressures, creates a long-range medical problem which requires a large number of surgical interventions. I believe the average number of surgical interventions for a normal weapon of war wound is two, whereas with mines it can be between four and six.

Mine victims can tell you about repeated operations to try to save various parts of their limbs. One friend of mine, who s had seven operations, has had to deal with the difficulties associated with potential addictions to pain killers and ultimately did lose his other leg. He could tell you that this weapon is more brutal than others. That is why the international community decided to place anti-personnel mines into the CCW in the late 1970s. The full title of the CCW refers to Weapons Which Are Deemed to be Indiscriminate or Excessively Inhumane in their Effects. I believe the international community has already spoken, and I would argue that the objective evidence proves that these weapons are, in fact, brutal beyond other weapons of war.

Indiscriminate? Of course, they re indiscriminate. No mine, no matter how smart, can tell the difference between a civilian and a soldier. There are only two types of mines, dumb and dumber. They don t check your I.D. card. They blow up when you contact them, when they re contacted by the presence or proximity of a person. We are now trying, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, to find ways to constrain the effects of war upon civilian populations. This is not a new project; it s been on-going for decades.

We are making progress, however. We hold military commanders accountable when they intentionally target civilians. We hold military leaders accountable when they bring artillery down on market squares in Bosnia or use weapons in an indiscriminate fashion. This is against the law of war. And you can trace back through military logs, command orders, command and control mechanisms the culpable person and bring that person to justice.

This is the entire framework of international law; this is the entire framework of what we call international humanitarian law, the attempt to put boundaries on war. War is not limitless. You re not entitled to destroy civilian populations, to attack food sources, to booby-trap places of worship. There are boundaries on war, and this treaty, negotiated in Oslo, will place a new boundary on warfare for the first time on a specific weapon of war. It ll be the first time we will ban completely a weapon which has been used widely by militaries throughout the world.

Mr. Sherman's final argument was that time makes all the difference. I would argue time makes little difference to anyone who s stepped on a mine, if that mine was due to go off, if it would self-destruct in ten hours or was due to be there for the next thirty years.

Yes, the humanitarian problem has been caused by dumb mines surviving many years past conflicts. But when Mr. Sherman urged us, in the final analysis, to remove this from politics and to bring it back to the realm of humanitarian concerns, I think he entirely missed the point. This is about politics. You cannot, as we found out in Oslo, stand up in front of the entire international community and tell them that your mines are not high tech enough and, therefore, should be banned, but our mines are high tech and they should be exempted.

This is not politically sellable in a multilateral negotiating forum; it is not acceptable as a way of doing business in international relations. The UN prides itself on showing no discrimination between countries rich or poor, developed or developing. And, that is precisely the argument behind the smart mine or, I should say, the dumb mine debate. That some mines are better than other mines. The only mine that will be better is the mine that can tell the difference between a soldier and a civilian and that mine has yet to be invented.

It s been an exciting year. I want to emphasize that it has really been a coalition effort. It s called the Ottawa Process but it s really about other countries, many of them middle powers, such as Norway, South Africa, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Philippines, Mexico, other countries around the world, getting together and saying enough is enough, we can do something to stop this, if we act now.

And so, as I left this conference last year, I went back to Ottawa and we started to think about how we are going to do this. Of course, we were greatly assisted by the fact that one of our coalition partners was the International Campaign To Ban Land Mines. It was an organization which had at that point about 700 NGOs around the world in over sixty countries and had been active on the issue for a number of years already. We sat down and planned the first Ottawa Conference in cooperation with the ICBL. And, we planned the road ahead in cooperation with the ICBL, as well as the international community [and] the Red Cross, another organization which has been very active on this issue.

We began to develop a road map. We were very fortunate because when we left the Ottawa Conference we had a road map before us. We had a document called An Agenda for Action on Anti-personnel Mines, a document which represented the voluntary contributions of states which attended the first Ottawa Cenference. It laid out a series of concrete activities governments, NGOs and other members of the international community were willing to undertake to push this issue forward.

All we really had to do was implement the plan. Of course, that wasn t quite as easy as it sounded. We had to summon some resources and get some people together and we were very fortunate to be ably assisted by the development of a core group of countries, a number of which which I just mentioned.

Norway agreed to pick up the negotiations in Oslo in the fall; Austria agreed to draft the treaty texts. In fact they already had a draft treaty text when they came to Ottawa; South Africa agreed to chair the conference; Germany hosted an experts meeting in Bonn to examine the compliance elements; Austria hosted the first meeting on the treaty text in Vienna in February. I think one of the pivotal moments, and which is really applicable to this forum, was a meeting in Maputo, Mozambique in early February. This is where the International Campaign sat down and strategized about the year ahead and what they were going to do to try to crank up the political volume on this issue. It was there where Canada and her core group partners decided to work very closely with the ICBLM on the implementation of the action plan that emerged from Ottawa and from Maputo.

Every regional organization in this world was engaged on this issue. Every international body that had a vague relationship to this issue was engaged on this issue. Every diplomat from core countries traveled abroad with briefs on this issue; and month after month the numbers began to grow. When we left Ottawa, we had fifty countries that had signed the Ottawa Declaration, a number of which were not really on board for a total ban, a number of which still have not come on board for a total ban.

Our numbers dropped dramatically after Ottawa. By the time we got to Moputu in February we were back up into the high thirties. By the time we got to the OAU Conference in Campton Park in May, we were up over the fifties. By the time we got to Brussels - the Belgian government hosted a major international conference, the half-way mark in the Ottawa Process, we were up over ninety. And by the time we got to Oslo, I believe there were 89 countries at the table representing over 100 countries. The CARICOM had sent one or two countries to represent all of their interests.

Oslo was an amazing negotiating round. I was somewhat incredulous at the beginning of Oslo, the degree to which countries around the world were very firm in their conviction that this treaty was about a total ban on anti-personnel mines. Some countries came to Oslo seeking exemptions and reservations and loopholes, and they were basically told no. Canada worked very hard to try to bring in countries that were uncomfortable with the Oslo text. But our argument was, it should not be at any price and ultimately no compromise was possible. But we do believe the argument in part made by Mr. Sherman that this treaty needs to be universalized. I believe it needs to be universalized for different reasons than those given by Mr. Sherman. Mr. Sherman characterized the participation in the Ottawa Process as light. I wish he could have applied at least medium to Ottawa. The Ottawa Process engaged landmine- affected countries. Cambodia will sign this treaty; Angola will sign this treaty; Mozambique will sign this treaty.

These are the countries that you most often read about with reference to the humanitarian impact of anti-personnel mines, countries where the amputee rate of the population can get as high as one in 300, where in the United States it will be one in 22,000. Those countries are in the Ottawa Process. So, is the Ottawa Process light in terms of participation? From the humanitarian perspective, I would say not. We have always made the case that this treaty should be universalized, but there is no example in international law of a treaty that sprang forth completely universal from the very beginning. None. There are many examples of treaties where countries have said, We won t sign this treaty ever. And they did a few years later. We set out to establish an international humanitarian norm. And when Minister Axworthy made his challenge last year to come back to Ottawa, one year later, to sign a treaty banning anti-personnel mines, he said we would do that if there were ten countries there in Ottawa.

There will be ten times that. Although we are reluctant to put numbers on it, we believe there will be over a hundred. This is unprecedented, completely unprecedented in the history of international disarmament and it s not because the Ottawa Process is light. It is not the low fat version of disarmament. It is what disarmament should become. It is a version of disarmament in the future where people can speak out on issues, engage governments, build coalitions, bring to people s living rooms the impact of decisions being taken in board rooms and military generals staffs that are remote from decision-making within populations. It is bringing the humanitarian impact of weapons of war to peoples everyday experiences and asking them to pass judgment on where we draw the line on warfare as we enter the twenty-first century.

The Ottawa Process is not the end. In Ottawa in December when we meet again we hope to move forward with a new type of process. We must clear the mines, care for the victims, and implement this treaty. We will do so in the same way in which we have achieved success over the past year. Coalition-building of like-minded states, working closely with our NGO partners, working closely with anyone who is willing to put a nickel forward to solve this problem.

So, Ottawa this fall will not be just about signing a treaty. It will be about bringing the world together to summon the resources to fix this problem, not in centuries, not in decades but in years. I think we are on the edge of a revolution on this issue alone. The pessimists who argue that this problem will take centuries to fix, I think are overly pessimistic. We need to look at mine-action in a different way. That is beginning to happen now around the world. Mine-action must be integrated with development.

It s remarkable when one looks at the only recently emerging statistics on the relationship between poverty and mine victims. In many parts of the world affected by mines, it is not the middle classes that are being affected by mines. It s the marginalized peoples which must go into that forest to get firewood, even though they know it s mined. It s people who are living on the margins of society that must go into dangerous areas. And, I believe that a new vision of mine-action only now developing, in many cases inspired by NGOs working on the ground, will emerge; and when we put resources together with the political will we ve marshalled over the past year, we can bring this problem under control much quicker than we now imagine.

That is the challenge before us. I think we should be incredibly happy about what we have accomplished over the past year. We should take second seat to no one. We should not claim that this process has been lightweight. It has been a heavy-weight process from the very beginning because of people such as yourselves who have given it weight around the world. Politicians have been moved on this issue, not the generals. Politicians have been affected by your voices. The generals have generally always followed after the politicians and the publics.

So thank you once again for asking me back this year. It s been a remarkable experience over the past year. I look forward to seeing some of you in Ottawa in December. Thank you.

JIM WURST: Thank you, Mr. Lawson. Our next speaker is Steve Goose, program director of the arms project at Human Rights Watch. He has from the beginning been one of the key players in the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, and he served as the deputy head of delegations for the Campaign during the Oslo negotiations. He is the co-author of Landmines, the Deadly Legacy and numerous other landmines-related publications. And some of you know he has been a frequent speaker at our panel discussions.

STEVE GOOSE, Human Rights Watch: Thank you, Jim. I was here last year when Bob spoke and a number of other people. I think last year I spoke right after Bob as well. So I may as well say this year what I did last year: Bob s told all the good stuff. I ll also repeat what I said a year ago, which is that it is in no small measure the hard work that Bob Lawson has put into this that has resulted in the success of the Ottawa Process and the treaty. Some of the true workers inside the departments of foreign affairs in governments, like Norway and Canada, and Austria and South Africa, have really made this happen, and Bob Lawson is certainly near the top, if not at the top, of that list.

I would like to begin by echoing one of the things that Bob said that maybe slipped over everybody s head. This is the first time that the international community will have banned a weapon after it has been in widespread use. We ve seen bans on chemical and biological weapons, and bans on exploding bullets, dum dum bullets. More recently we saw the ban on blinding lasers. But this ll be the very first time that a weapon that has already been in widespread use has been bannned. And I think that that is a phenomenal achievement.

This is an excellent treaty. It s probably a reflection of the close partnership between governments and NGOs that Bob could speak for fifteen minutes and not really talk about the provisions of the treaty itself. I ll spend a lot of my time talking about the provisions of the treaty. That s probably the reverse of what you would usually see. But, in fact, the treaty is clearly a collaborative effort between governments and the International Campaign and the ICRC (International Committee for the Red Cross), another very important partner in all of this.

We ve been consulted all along the way; we ve been able to be inside the rooms during the intense discussions and have made a big impact on the final product. This is a comprehensive ban treaty that is remarkably free of loopholes and exceptions. Most of you in this room probably find that quite surprising because we re used to treaties that are full of loopholes and exceptions and reservations. That is not the case here.

This treaty bans all anti-personnel landmines in all circumstances. It does not just apply in international conflicts or internal conflicts, but in all circumstances. It bans the production, the stockpiling, the transfer and the use. But it goes beyond the ban and also requires destruction of stockpiles within four years after the treaty enters into force. It requires the destruction of mines that are already in the ground within ten years after entry into force. The treaty will enter into force after 40 governments have ratified.

It also calls on governments to provide assistance for mine victim programs. It has a solid verification and compliance regime and reporting requirements for transparency, articles that were strengthened by U.S. participation in the negotiations.

The treaty will be signed, we think, by more than 100 nations. Bob Sherman riled Bob Lawson somewhat by referring to the light membership. I d like to address that issue also.

We will not have China on board this treaty; we may have Russia, if Boris Yeltsin gets his way. I think it is still possible that we ll get the United States. I was sad to hear Bob say so unequivocally that the US is not going to sign this treaty. If I was a betting man, I wouldn t put my money on it between now and December, but I think it is still possible. The Nobel Peace Prize, among other things, has, I think, turned up the pressure for the US to get on board this.

But even if none of the three of them sign, one of the wonderful things about this treaty and the process that led to it is that it has shown the US, Russia and China are not the only countries that matter, are not the only countries in the world that can get things done. We should look not at who is not going to be signing it, but who will be signing it. We have commitments from all of NATO, except for the US, Turkey and Greece. We have commitments from all of the European Union, except for Finland and Greece. If you drew up a list of the dozen or so major producers and exporters of anti-personnel landmines over the course of the past two or three decades, those countries who have provided the mines that have caused the humanitarian disaster we face today - the majority of those nations are committed to sign this treaty.

People get confused and say, Well, none of the big producers are signing. Well, a lot of the people who used to be the big producers are signing. They stopped producing because they got on board this treaty. Countries like: France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bosnia - these were the major producers and exporters in the 1960s and 70s and 80s. They re all going to sign this treaty.

But even more importantly, and Bob Lawson talked about this, the governments that have used landmines the most, those countries that are the are most affected by anti-personnel landmines, are going to be signing this treaty: Cambodia, Mozambique, Angola, Sudan, Bosnia, Croatia, are all going to sign this treaty. They re all committed to destroying their stockpiles within four years.

This is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the treaty itself, that those who have used mines the most are going to destroy their extensive stockpiles within a four-year period; so that, if war returns to Angola, they won t have anti-personnel landmines to use anymore.

The countries that Bob Sherman has named in fact have not exported landmines for the past three years. US intelligence sources - the National Ground Intelligence Center, that tracks foreign trade and weapons, tells us that there have been no significant exports of landmines for more than three years now, not from China, not from Russia. We have had de facto a global moratorium on trade in place for three years. Such a stigma has been attached to this weapon that governments no longer feel comfortable exporting it. So, even if China stays ourside, even if China continues to produce in large numbers, if those mines stay within the Chinese borders, that is not going to present a humanitarian disaster.

The process that led to the treaty, we feel is in many ways as important, if not more important, than the treaty itself. The smaller and middle powers have driven it. It has not been burdened by consensus rules. The tyranny of consensus has not destroyed this process, as it so often does, in venues like the CCW and the CD.

And, second, again to highlight the very close cooperation between NGOs and governments, between the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines and governments: I believe this cooperation was unprecendented. Certainly the fact that the International Campaign was given official observer status during the Oslo negotiations is a clear indicator that there can be a workable partnership. I don t believe there s ever been an instance where, in negotiations on a treaty dealing with arms control or even international law issues, NGOs have been allowed inside the room, allowed to make interventions the same as any government.

For the future, the Campaign was able to produce by the final day of Oslo, when they were signing the treaty, an action plan for the next two years. We were not about to sit back and say shouldn t we be pleased with what s happened. We did say that. But we also were ready to say here s what you need to do.

The Action Plan laid out actions and activities in five different areas. First, getting the maximum number of signatures on this treaty between now and December 3 and 4. Second, and perhaps most importantly for now, to have this treaty enter into force as rapidly as possible, to get forty governments to ratify so that this becomes a legally binding international instrument. We want to do that before the end of 1999 in any case, but we re determined in fact to try to make it happen by the end of 1998. We re going to work closely with UNICEF and others to make this happen.

Third, we need to ensure that the governments enact domestic legislation to implement this treaty. The compliance mechanism on this treaty largely relies on domestic legislation, and we ll push for very strong legislation that includes penal sanctions.

We have the huge job, fourthly, of trying to find a role for NGOs in monitoring this treaty. One of the things that we are going to try to do in Ottawa is to construct a system where NGOs and governments can work together: to monitor this treaty, to monitor possible violations; to look at new use; to look at possible transfers; to make sure that stocks are destroyed; that emplaced mines are destroyed in a timely fashion and that no new production takes place.

And lastly, we need to universalize this treaty. We re going to have most of the world s nations, but there will those who stay outside. We re going to have to put the same sort of pressures on them that we have on those who ve agreed to come on board already. It was only a year-and-a-half ago that we could only count twelve or fourteen governments as being pro-ban. In a year-and-a-half, we managed to get ourselves up to a hundred, perhaps over a hundred.

In another year-and-a-half, we d like to get the rest of the eighty or so nations who are still outside of this treaty. I think we can do it, by using the same methods that we have over the course of the past six years, by continuing this partnership with governments and the ICRC and by continuing to make sure that civil society is the engine that drives the process. Thank you.

JIM WURST: Thank you. Our next speaker is Ambassador Johan Lovald, the Norwegian Ambassador to Ottawa who was Vice-Chairman of the Norwegian Delegation to the Oslo Conference. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and has been working in the Norwegian foreign service since. He has been posted to Beijing, New York, Brussels, where he was a member of the delegation to NATO, and in several posts in Norway.

AMBASSADOR JOHAN LOVALD: Thank you very much. When we met in Oslo in September, for the Diplomatic Conference on an International Total Ban on Anti- personnel Mines, it was for the purpose of addressing one of the most serious and pressing humanitarian issues of our time, the continued use of anti-personnel mines. Because the problem was urgent, it required an immediate response. The Oslo Conference offered an historic opportunity to reach an agreement that would significantly reduce the human suffering caused by these weapons. It s a testimony to a unique process that the Oslo Conference did indeed grasp the opportunity that was offered by finally reaching consensus on a total ban.

The diplomatic initiative taken by Canada, and the long-term systematic efforts by the humanitarian and voluntary organizations, particularly the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, but also the International Committee of the Red Cross, explain the essence of this remarkable coalition.

In this context, we all applaud the recent decision by the Nobel Committee to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1997 to Jody Williams and the ICBLM. This was indeed most deserved. It will certainly serve to galvanize support for the very important work that still lies ahead.

We are, of course, also grateful for the commitment of individuals who make up this coalition, most notably, the late Princess of Wales, whose efforts we greatly appreciated and respected. It was also warmly welcomed by all that the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, came to Oslo and addressed the Diplomatic Conference, thus lending the full authority of his high office to the total ban.

The Secretary-General reminded us in Oslo of the tragic and highly relevant fact that the first Peacekeeper who died in the service of the United Nations did so as a result of an anti- personnel mine in the Middle East.

Yet, we all know that the problems caused by anti-personnel mines cannot be fully solved right away, despite the present broad, international agreement on the total ban. An international convention on the prohibition of the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of anti- personnel mines and on their destruction will not immediately alter the situation on the ground caused by the millions of mines that have already been deployed. Nor will it overnight produce the technologies needed to render these weapons harmless. Nor will it automatically guarantee rapid, universal adherence.

Nevertheless, when we met in Oslo in September, I believe delegations generally recognized the need to take adequate, practical steps to reduce the number of lives lost through the use of anti-personnel mines. Most delegations that came to Oslo held that only a clear, consistent ban could produce a strong and unequivocal, international norm that would eventually compel nations to take the necessary measures to eliminate these mines altogether.

This is exactly what was achieved. This was and is an enormously important and necessary first step. The Oslo Conference provided us with an important and powerful tool. It is now up to us to make use of it. Subsequent attempts by some to question the validity and relevance of this convention must therefore be rejected.

My own country, Norway, is far away from the killing fields of Cambodia, Afghanistan, Angola and other conflict areas. However, in our development and cooperation efforts, humanitarian assistence and participation in peacekeeping operations, we are constantly confronted with the innumerable lives ruined by the use of landmines. Our own frustration can only partly reflect the despair felt by all those civilians, women and children, arbitrarily hit by these weapons. It seemed to us in our own development/cooperation efforts that we were attacking the symptoms of an epidemic while not dealing with the real causes. It became increasingly apparent to us that without the total ban on landmines our own development assistance would in a number of countries and areas never achieve its objectives.

A similar recognition applies to mine clearing. Norway has been heavily involved in mine-clearing operations in various conflict areas, in Africa, Asia and now also in Europe. Some forty-five million US dollars have been used for this purpose since 1994. It is in our view unacceptable that current new deployments of anti-personnal mines by far outstrip our mine- clearing capacity. Again, the answer lies in putting a stop to the deployment of these mines. Preventive action is always more effective than remedial action.

It is our hope, and indeed conviction, that the agreement reached in Oslo already has established a de facto and strong international norm against the further use of these weapons. In so doing, it is also our hope that we can finally launch a concerted international action in the field of mine clearing and victim assistance. It is in this perspective that my country has committed itself to contributing US $100 million over the next five years for these purposes. We see this as a follow-up of the obligations assumed by us and others at the Oslo Conference and now contained in the convention to be signed in Ottawa.

I believe that based on the total ban convention that has been agreed, we are in fact already well into phase two of the Ottawa Process. A prime objective for this phase is to secure an early entry into force. Another important goal is to make sure that we have at least 100 countries in Ottawa in December prepared to sign the convention. This UN General Assembly obviously plays an important role in making sure that this happens.

Some have questioned the value of a convention that may not from day one include among its signatories and participants major countries possessing or producing such weapons. Obviously the ultimate test of the Ottawa Process is whether we shall achieve universal support for a total ban. Personally, I have no doubt that we shall succeed.

First of all, we have achieved by now a very clear, international norm without loopholes, which will present all countries with an unambiguous, political and moral imperative. I find it hard to believe that this new norm can be ignored by anybody for very long.

Secondly, the unique coalition behind the Ottawa Process will obviously continue its work. Again, the Nobel Peace Prize is a strong guarantee that it will. I am of the firm conviction that this coalition will monitor closely the implementation of the new convention. Non- compliance with a new international norm will no doubt be met with an appropriate response.

And, thirdly, it seems to me that signals are already coming out of several capitals which suggests that the international consensus achieved in Oslo is already making its impact felt.

So, I conclude on this positive note, and why not? The momentum behind the Ottawa Process has so far surprised us all. There is no reason to believe that it should not continue exactly that also in the time to come. Thank you very much.

JIM WURST: Thank you very much, Ambassador. Our next speaker is Jody Williams. Jody Williams began working for the Viet Nam Veterans of America Foundation at the end of 1991 to bring together a coalition to ban anti-personnel landmines. From two organizations, the coalition has grown to more than 1,000 non-governmental organizations in over sixty countries working together as the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines.

Ms. Williams has spoken extensively all over the globe on the issue of the landmines crisis and the Campaign s solution, an international treaty to ban the weapon. She has also written extensively about the issue and co-authored a seminal work on the socio-economic impact of the weapon called, After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines.

She brought to the Campaign eleven years of experience as an advocate and organizer on issues related to US policy in Central America. Upon graduation from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, she coordinated the Nicaragua and Honduras Foundation project, which organized and led fact-finding delegations of U.S. opinion makers to Central America. Subsequently, she was associate director of Medical Aid to El Salvador, a Los Angeles-based humanitarian relief organization. The International Campaign and Ms. Williams, as you are well aware, are the co-recepients of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. Ms. Williams.

JODY WILLIAMS: Thank you. I am going to focus on the process. We all are pretty aware of what s at stake here in terms of the treaty itself, in terms of government sentiments from several countries, like: the United States, China, maybe Russia, who don t feel like they want to be part of the process.

I ve been very personally moved by the process itself and very concerned about the integrity of that process and that it be preserved into the future. So, I m going to focus on this past year, overall, because of the dramatic changes in the Campaign and the cooperative effort between goverments and the Campaign.

I think most of you are aware of the early stages, starting from a handful of NGOs, growing national campaigns that put pressure on their governments, which resulted in governments taking steps that then also had the effect of inducing competition between governments to be leaders. Those are the early days. And it was all of that that laid the groundwork for the possibility for a Canadian challenge. It was the Canadian challenge that dramatically changed possibilities. And I d like to look at that for just a couple of minutes.

When we went to Ottawa last year, we did not know that Foreign Minister Axworthy was going to challenge the world to respond as soon as possible to the humanitarian crisis of landmines. We knew that the Canadian government was exhibiting tremendous leadership in calling governments together to try to strategize about how we could achieve a ban after the failure of the CCW review conference.

I respectfully disagree with Mr. Sherman that that was a successful endeavor. We considered it to be minimally improving the CCW. Actually we thought that it was a huge step backwards, in terms of the definition of the weapon. We ve corrected that in the Oslo Treaty. In our view, out of the failure of the CCW - because the ICBL had begun by inviting a small group of what we considered to be truly pro-ban governments to come together with us to dialogue during the final sessions of the CCW - emerged the Ottawa Process.

We get to Canada and, as you know, I think, there were fifty governments participating and twenty-four or -five observer states. At the end, as you all know, came the historic challenge from Foreign Minister Axworthy for the world to come back in one year and sign a ban treaty. And one of the things that we were pleased to hear was his commitment, the commitment of his government to sign that treaty, even if it were ten governments. They were that committed to establishing the norm of behavior.

Now, I m going to give you my view of what happened. Bob alluded to the nervousness when he was here last year after the Canadian challenge. The Canadian challenge disturbed the diplomatic community greatly. Even those governments that were pro-ban were, in diplomatic terms, horrified that a government would step out of normal channels and try to do something different. Bob Sherman talks about the CD and the CCW being medium and heavy. You know, those are the normal diplomatic channels that had produced nothing in response to this humanitarian crisis.

But, diplomats, understandably so, are comfortable with what they know; and what they know is a cumbersome, ponderous process that takes forever. And, I could go into other aspects, but I won t.

Not only, though, did the Canadian challenge disturb governments, it kind of made NGOs a little bit uncomfortable. And, from my own experience in Central America days, we were not exactly comfortable with the concept of government as partner. We wondered who is this Canadian diplomat with strange shoes who keeps calling us up on the phone and saying that he s our partner? I kept thinking, he s trying to co-opt us. I know, they re trying to co-opt us. They re going to ruin this Campaign. And there were NGOs in the field who did not have the privilege of working closely with our core government allies, like Bob Lawson and the Norwegian government, who were very concerned that we were selling out.

So, this process made everybody a little bit uncomfortable at first. And so there was a lot at stake that it succeed.

What was at stake was, obviously, that governments could respond in a new way. That in the post-Cold war world, the superpowers, or the one remaining superpower, if you will, does not have to determine what happens in the world anymore.

Equally important is the fact that NGOs are taken seriously by governments. Canada, Norway and South Africa took the risk of saying to the rest of the governments, who thought it was quite horrifying that we were being invited into the room. They said: Look, we ve worked with them for years. They re reasonable, they re responsible, they re not going to stick their tongue out at us in the conference. They will participate as the professionals that they are.

It was very important that it proceed from that point of view. So we would all gain confidence that, in fact, we can work together to change the world.

I d like to focus for a second on Oslo itself. As you know, we had the privilege of being in the room; I think it was the first time. In many of the meetings we were there, but we were only allowed in the public sessions and then we had to go stand outside. The Norwegian government had the courage, in spite of some opposition by other governments, to say, No, as the host government, we re inviting them because we want to. So, we were inside.

I was head of delegation; Steve Goose was deputy head of delegation. And we got to participate as observers, which meant we could speak. We were in all of the sessions. It was an amazing process, as Bob Lawson said, to see the smaller and middle-sized governments come together, and, as Bob Sherman points out, they knew why they were there. They had committed to coming to Oslo to negotiate a ban treaty based on the Austrian draft - and there sits the father of the Austrian Treaty, Thomas Hajnoczi. They knew what they were coming for; they were like- minded. They were coming to establish a new norm.

Unfortunately, and Bob Sherman has heard this before, so it is not new to him, in our view the US did not come in good faith. They came to bend the will of the world to accommodate existing US policy. There were some extremely tense moments in Oslo. Not during the first week, when US proposals were repeatedly set aside, but in the final days, when the treaty had been negotiated and it was this incredible thing that we never thought we d get. And then the US asked for an twenty-four hour delay to see if something could be worked out.

We were actually quite horrified and terrified at that moment - you know, the US does carry huge weight - that the calls being made would have an effect and the world would in the last minute do what it always had done, cave in to the superpower. And, instead, when we came back after the twenty-four delay, the US withdrew its proposal, and we got the unambiguous ban treaty that establishes a new norm.

It was one of the greatest achievements - even more than the Nobel Peace Prize, quite honestly. What we worked for all these years was not to win the Nobel Peace Prize. We worked all these years to achieve a ban treaty, and it was achieved. I don t think diplomats have ever had the audience stand up and clap the way we did in Oslo. When that treaty was gavelled in as passed, we stood up and just cheered.

It was awesome, I have to say it was just awesome. And then when the delegates all came out, the rest of the Campaign was standing outside our office with big signs and jumping and cheering, and we cheered them all coming down the stairs. It was one of probably the most moving moments in my political life. And, it was critically, historically important that small and middle-sized powers could say No. Had they not said No, the Ottawa Process would have been made a mockery. How could you ever say again to small and middle-level powers that you can come together and do something different?

But they had the courage, despite tremendous pressure, to keep saying No. And, it was really something we should all be proud of. It is something that the governments of the world that had the courage to say No should be proud of, and we should thank them.

Those of you in the audience who are members of this Campaign should get the list of the governments who were in Oslo and you should write them letters from your organizations thanking them. You know, it s really easy to criticize; we often forget to say thank you. They deserve thank you s, just like everybody else.

Now to the future. There are governments, individuals, who would like to see this fail. In their view, it is a lightweight process, it is a country club treaty, you know, a political feel good. It is essential that this treaty enter into force as soon as possible. It is essential that the campaigns keep up their work with their governments.

As Steve mentioned, we developed a very comprehensive plan of action. Our campaigns are asked to go and meet with their governments, not just to tell them to come to Ottawa and sign and then ratify, but to sit down with them and ask them, What national legislation are you guys implementing to make sure this treaty is a reality domestically? What are your transparency measures here? How are you going to destroy your stocks and when? Can we be there? Can the media be there? What are you going to do in the region to bring other governments on board?

So, in spite of the fact that we ve had these tremendous victories - I think we took five minutes to rest and pat ourselves on the back, but we can t stop because it s critically important that this beautiful treaty become reality, or the cynics will win. So, there s a lot more work to do, not just for the treaty but for the process, so that other issues can be dealt with in the same way, and governments and NGOs will have the confidence to move forward with or without the superpower. Thank you.

I hope you all know that you are clapping for Steve Goose, of the Steering Committee of the Campaign. He is also a Nobel laureate.

JIM WURST: Thank you very much. Ambassador John Bruce Campbell since September 1996 has been Ambassador for Disarmament and the Permanent Representative of Australia at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He was educated at Wesley College at Perth and the University of Western Australia. In his career in the Foreign Service he has been stationed in South Korea, New York, Belgrade, Laos and Israel. Ambassador Campbell was the Special Coordinator on the landmines issue at the 1997 session of the Conference on Disarmament.

AMBASSADOR JOHN CAMPBELL:

...Jody has just talked about cumbersome diplomatic processes that take too long and deliver too little. Let me remind you that the Conference on Disarmament has delivered the Chemical Weapons Convention, which took a lot of work and a lot of time, admittedly. But it involved a large number of countries who were the countries of concern as far as chemical weapons are concernee. Many of them were anti-involvement in that convention before they started, but, in the course of the process, they joined it. They not only joined it, they acquiesced in the establishment of the chemical weapons organization in The Hague, which will oversee verification and compliance.

The Conference on Disarmament also last year delivered the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which, for many of us, particularly for my country, was a great milestone. The diplomatic process has resulted also in the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And, these are achievements which, believe me, we think are important. So, I just say to Jody, please don t knock the diplomatic process. It may be slow, I grant you that, but it is comprehensive. It works in mysterious ways, but sometimes it does deliver the goods and, in particular, in relation to the CWC and the CTBT, the NPT. I think there is nobody in this hall who will demur from the fact that these are great achievements.

With regard to the role of the Conference on Disarmament with landmines: Why? Those of us who want the CD to be involved argue that the Ottawa Process is fine but it doesn t include some of the countries who are major producers and users of landmines. Therefore we felt that if we could get a mandate to begin work in the CD, we would encompass most of the militarily significant countries in the field of landmines in an incremental process which would lead us to achieving what the Ottawa Process has already achieved, but without universality.

We talk about a global ban. I have to say that I don't regard it as global, it s a partial ban. Hopefully, it ll become a global ban. The task of those that sign on in Ottawa, and it might well include Australia. My government will take a decision on the seventeenth of November whether or not to join with other countries in Ottawa in the signing ceremony (Australia did sign the Convention at Ottawa.). The task of those who are behind the Ottawa Process is now to widen the net, to capture those governments who are not part of the process and haven t been willing to be part of it.

I began the year thinking that would be a difficult task. But as I ve seen governments who were being very pro-CD and hadn t signed onto the Ottawa Process, one-by-one sign onto the Ottawa Process, I m beginning to think that post-Ottawa, the pressure that you can bring to bear on those that stand outside the process may well bear fruit. I certainly hope that is the case.

The other question I think needs addressing is - and this is what the Conference on Disarmament would take into account - is the fact that it s not just states that are responsible for the problems of landmines. It is non-states. And we re going to talk about transfers, exports and imports. The CD needs to look more comprehensively than the Ottawa Process has done at where the real problem lies. Who is putting mines in the ground today? How many mines are going in?

There is a lot of misinformation. I said to Jody, there is disinformation. Some of this misinformation was used as disinformation during these past twelve months. The claim that there are as many as two million mines being laid each year, for example. Now if there are two million landmines being laid each year, those of us, like Australia and others, who are actively engaged in demining programs would throw up their hands and say we re never going to defeat it. The figure is basically a UN figure, which, I understand, came out of 1992 or 1993 when the Bosnian crisis was at its height and therefore reflected the mines that were being laid at that time. I think if you took a 1995 or 1996 figure, it would be much less. I hope that it s much less.

Secondly, we need to know who is responsible, who is still producing mines, where are they being produced, are they being traded? These are the issues, in the rush to get a global ban, we haven t been really, seriously concered, at least not at the government level. Maybe in the NGO ranks these issues are well-known.

Thirdly, statistics on casualties. The fact that there are twenty thousand plus casualties each year has been advanced as a reason for us to move quickly to a global ban. That s fine, except that that creates the impression that with the signing of the Ottawa Process, next year the casualties are going to go down. They re not. We will have twenty thousand casualties next year, and the year after, and the year after that, and probably the year after that. And why? Because the casualties are from the mines that are already in the ground. The Ottawa Process is not going to change that. Anything we do in the CD is not going to change that. The CCW is not going to change that.

I am very pleased to see that as part of the Ottawa signing ceremony, there is a second track process to look at how we deal with de-mining and victims rehabilitation. The Ottawa Process will, hopefully, stop new mines going into the ground. So, to the extent that it does that, then, eventually, the statistics may start to decline. But let s all realize that.

Finally, another worry I have is that if you have a global ban in place, those who are donating money to de-mining and victims rehabilitation will say, We don t have to do that anymore. We ll give to something else because the Ottawa Process has delivered us a ban and that solved the problem. We need to make sure that we tell people that we haven t solved the problem. The problem has only just begun; we have a real, hard road ahead of us to address how we get rid of those mines that are already in the ground.

JIM WURST: Before we open the floor to questions, we ll have opportunity for the panelists to comment on what s been said.

ROBERT SHERMAN: I want to respond very quickly to some of the points that the other panelists have made. On the question of whether anti-personnel landmines are more indiscriminate than artillery, Bob Lawson made the argument that if you use artillery against schools or hospitals, that s illegal and that makes them more discriminate. If you use landmines against schools or hospitals that is also illegal. There s no difference. The difference is that if you use the mines against what appears to be an appropriate target at the time you use them, later on it can become an inappropriate civilian target. That is a matter of time, my fundamental point.

If there are any Viet Nam veterans in the audience, you ll remember that in Viet Nam we used to use what was called H and I fire, harassment and interdiction. That was artillery that was fired out into areas of the jungle where we had no particular target in mind. We just knew it was generally occupied by people we didn t agee with, but we had no specific information on any specific point we were aiming at. It s very hard to imagine anything more indiscriminate than that. That was artillery that was legal then. It s still legal but the United States wouldn t plan to do it anymore. But there are other countries that very well could. So to say that in that respect that mines are less discriminate than artillery, I don t think really holds up.

Bob said if you have a short-lived mine and somebody steps on it in that short life, it doesn t do that person any good to remember that other mines might have gone longer. I think, Bob, that that s kind of a cheap shot. The difference between a thirty-year mine and a four-hour mine is a factor of sixty thousand-to-one. The probability that somebody s going to step on a mine is a direct function of the active life of the mine. Now, if you take that sixty thousand-to-one difference and consider the common figure of 26,000 APL casualties per year, if all of those mines were four-hour mines instead of thirty-year mines, that would mean one casualty every three years, and we wouldn t be having this meeting today. The difference between short-lived mines and long-lived mines is very significant and there is no way around that.

Steve said this was the first time that a weapon in widespread use will be banned. That s certainly true, and the problem we re up against. That s why this ban is proving as difficult to negotiate and as difficult to universalize as it is. Bob Lawson said the distinction between short- lived mines and long-lived mines can t ever be negotiated in an international forum. I disagree. We ve already done it at CCW. If a mine is not in a marked and monitored area, it must be a short-lived mine. That was adopted by a group of countries that contains about twice as many people and about twice as many landmine stocks as the Ottawa Process does today.

Steve argued we shouldn t look at who s not signing, but at who s signing. Both propositions are correct. We should look at who s signing and the Ottawa Process deserves credit for bringing in the countries. Jody certainly deserves her Nobel Prize; Canada certainly deserves credit for bringing in the African countries that would not have been brought in otherwise. At the same time, we need to look at the countries that have not been brought in because that is the problem that remains.

On whether it matters more whether you get the exporting countries or you get the consuming countries - I don t share Steve s confidence that by bringing the consuming countries into this treaty, we are going to prevent new mines from being laid, because many mines are laid by sub-national entities who are not going to be bound by any treaty.

It s true that the traditional, major exporters now say they re not exporting. And maybe they re not, but maybe they are. But if they hadn t signed up to a treaty that says they re not going to export, then they can change that policy at any time. We need a formal agreement preventing futrther APL exports.

Finally, I concluded my opening statement with a plea that we treat this problem in humanitarian terms rather than political terms. Bob Lawson explicitly rejected that; Jody, I think, implicitly rejected it in part. I hope you ll reconsider that. Whether the choice of action is made on humanitarian or political terms leads in very different directions, and I hope we will go in a humanitarian course.

AMBASSADOR JOHAN LOVALD: Just a couple observations following the information both from Mr. Sherman and Ambassador Campbell. Since I m not part of the UN scene I could be allowed a couple observations regarding the follow-up of the Oslo Conference and what s going to happen following the signatures in Ottawa. Much has been said about the follow-up in other fora. I think the impression is being created that there are now ways to follow-up the Convention agreed in Oslo in a variety of ways, for example, in the Conference on Disarmament. I think my country is among those that certainly would have liked to see the CD take a very active role on this. We know why that didn t happen, and that is why we met in Oslo.

In Oslo we did agree on a total ban; it has all the elements that we are interested in. There are prohibitions against transfers and exports. Since we now have an international norm, we should look for ways to be complementary, to the extent we can. We must move with a great deal of caution. We would not like to see anything done at this stage that would undermine what has been achieved already. We must not forget that the momentum is behind the Ottawa Process. It is the Ottawa Process that holds out the promise that this is going to be something universal. When we discuss these matters in other fora, we should keep that in mind and make sure that we don t detract from something which already is having an impact in various capitals.

AMBASSADOR JOHN CAMPBELL: With due respect to my colleague, I find that an extraordinary statement. What I hear is that the Oslo Process is here, the Ottawa Convention s in place and, therefore, we must do nothing else that can possibly help the cause of landmines because, if we do, we ll undermine the Ottawa Process.

Well, I am sorry but I actually think that the end result of doing something for landmines rather than protecting a particular convention or a particular agreement or the ownership of that particular agreement is far more important. And that s why I think that if we can do something that complements in the CD, that complements the Ottawa Process, then why on earth would anybody want to stand in its way? Thank you.

STEVE GOOSE: Even though I do serve as the chairman of the Steering Committee of the U.S. Campaign To Ban Land Mines, I didn t make many comments about US policy on this. But, since we have a chance for rebuttal, I ll take just a few seconds to do this.

It's disturbing, although not surprising, to hear Bob Sherman spend so much of his time trying to draw the distinction between smart and dumb anti-personnel landmines. Bob and I and many other people had that debate for two-and-a-half years during the negotiations of the CCW. Within a few days of the conclusion of the CCW on May 3, 1996, President Clinton announced what he termed a new policy on anti-personnel landmines. There was not much that was new in it. But included in that policy was a commitment to destroy all anti-personnel landmines. He said that smart landmines are not the landmines that are causing the problem around the world right now, but that the US, as part of a treaty, was committed to eliminating smart anti-personnel landmines as well.

Well, Bob Sherman's presentation today didn't lead you to believe that the US is ready to eliminate smart anti-personnel landmines. In fact, US policy has backslid on this issue. Right before they went to Oslo, the US decided that it wanted to protect some of its smart anti- personnel landmines from a ban. They decided to rename their Volcano, their Gator and their MOPUMS (Modular Pack Mine System), smart anti-personnel landmines systems, as something else. They wanted to rename them as anti-handling devices for anti-tank mines, as sub-munitions and anti-tank mine systems. They wanted to rename them as explosive devices. These are landmines that have been on the Pentagon s list of anti-personnel mines banned from export since 1992. When the President put a cap on the inventory of US anti-personnel landmines in January of this year, those three systems were on the list. And yet the US now first tried to convince delegates in Oslo that these weren t anti-personnel landmines. They were rejected. They re now trying to convince the American public that these are not anti-personnel landmines. I hope they re rejected there as well.

The US is reserving one million dumb mines to plant in the Korean Peninsula. One million dumb mines to plant on the Korean Peninsula, not in the DMZ but in the twenty miles between the DMZ and Seoul within four days of early warning of a North Korean attack.

Bob Sherman noted that if the US had signed the Ottawa Treaty, they were prepared to give up those one million dumb mines, as well as more than nine million smart mines. Well, I would just say they should give those up anyway, whether they sign the treaty or not, and we should work for that vigorously.

JODY WILLIAMS: I d also like to comment on the issue of complementarity. I guess I take issue by the way it was framed by the Australian ambassador, that people would be opposed to trying to resolve the issue in other forums. That isn t the issue.

The issue is that the world - eighty-nine countries - came together in Oslo and negotiated a new norm which says that the use of the weapon is illegal. If you re attempting to establish a norm, and then you give other countries the option of selecting whichever treaty they want to apply to their own use, how do you establish a norm? How do you outlaw the use of the weapon if you have 110 countries committed enough to give up the weapon, but then you have those that still want to keep it, so they sign the CCW so they can use smart mines wherever they want and however they want? Then you have the others who want to keep all their mines, so they go into the CD and negotiate a treaty that says they won t export them anymore. That s not exactly the establishment of a norm. They re either illegal or they re not. That is the confusion and dismay, if you will, about the issue of complementarity. You shouldn t be giving countries the out. They should have sustained pressure and the stigmatization of this weapon. That s the issue.

JIM WURST: Thank you. We ll go to the floor for questions.

PETER DAVIES, OXFAM and Safer World UN Representative: I d like to comment on Bob Sherman s plea that we look at this issue from the humanitarian point of view rather than the political. What concerns me is that...President Clinton has presented the issue in very stark political terms and done so on the basis that the US is not prepared to sign this treaty, the Ottawa Process, because it wants to be sure that we do not put our own soldiers in harms way, as if the life of a soldier is more precious than the life of a Cambodian civilian.

The US position was to ask for nine more years delay, based on the fact that they needed more time to get rid of or find substitutes for anti-personnel mines. It seems to me that the Clinton Administration has seen this from the perspective of the Pentagon. This is the way in which it s been framed in the editorials in the papers and the op-ed pieces that have come out in favor of the US position on landmines.

BOB SHERMAN: ...As far as the use of mixed munitions is concerned, which is the issue you re talking about and the issue that has centered the debate for the past month or so, I m not going to get into a semantic discussion of what these devices are. But, the fact is that none of them has a life of more than fifteen days. They can be set for either four hours or two days or fifteen days. What the United States was offering was a way to bring us into the treaty while preserving our right to use certain weapons which do not create a humanitarian problem. It would help us to defend civilians in Korea and possibly other places, and prevent a humanitarian disaster. The Olso Conference decided that that was not an acceptable proposition and I certainly respect their right to make that decision.

STEPHANIE FRASER: Thank you all very much for all of your work. It s really wonderful. Ms. Williams, you ve gotten heaps of thanks and I d like to add on to that. I would also like to say thank you to Ambassador Lovald for mentioning Diana Spencer, because I feel that we ve all lost a colleague who was just getting started in her influence. I appreciate it.

How do anti-tank mines fit into the effort to stop anti-personnel mines? How did the citizen access to the negotiations change the outcome, in your opinion, of this process? Is the process of destruction or parameters for destruction spelled out in the Oslo Treaty? Thank you.

BOB LAWSON: I ll begin on the questions of definitions of anti-tank mines because I was in the room through all those discussions on behalf of Canada. The whole question of what is actually an anti-personnel mine has, obviously, been quite contentious for a number of years. In the CCW, Certain Conventional Weapons convention, the definition that we ended up with in May of 1996 defined anti-personnel mines as something which is primarily designed to explode by the presence, proximity or contact of a person. There is a great deal of heartache around the idea of primarily because it indicated that, if there were other purposes for this particular device, it really was a judgment call as to what was the primary purpose of this device. The NGOs and a number of like-minded governments lobbied quite heavily to have primarily removed in the Olso text, and it was removed.

The question of anti-tank mines then raises the question of othet devices, which are quite similar in many respects in design to anti-personnel mines, and how one draws a distinction between them. People argued that we had to draw a line based on effect, that it didn t matter what you called it, whether it was purple, green or you called it a submunition or anything else. What it did is what mattered. So the definition that we got in Oslo of an anti-personnel mine that defines it according to effect amd removed primarily. It goes further when one looks at anti-tank mines, particularly, anti-vehicle mines, because we talk about anti-handling devices. This is the big debate. Are devices which are attached to anti-vehicle mines, which may cause them to function like anti-personnel mines, make anti-vehicle mines anti-personnel mines? I think the short answer is yes. The definition defines what is an anti-handling device and this is where a lot of the debate ended up in the final analysis.

This is a hard issue, particularly with respect to the US position at Oslo. What is defined as an anti-handling device is something which causes the device to explode through intentional contact. And, there is a difficult line to draw, but we tried to do is say this: A device which explodes as a result of an otherwise innocent act - walking your dog, walking through the woods - is an anti-personnel mine. If you re not aware that this thing is there and you somehow stumble across it and it explodes, it s an anti-personnel mine. It doesn t matter what you call it or what color it is or how long-lived it is. It s an anti-personnel mine and it s banned. In Canada s case, anti-tank mines will be banned because they function by unintended contact. This means that anti-handling devices which were primarily designed to protect anti-tank mines, which function only through intentional tamping, are still legal.

We need to look at this in the future. Are anti-vehicle mines causing humanitarian problems around the world? I don t have the answer. I have been involved in arms control negotiations - I helped negotiate the conventional forces agreement in Europe. We tried to define what a tank is. One would think that s quite obvious; believe me, it isn t. We made lists of every vehicle or weapon system in Europe, and tried to define it that way. So we had a definition as well as an extensive list. This is a treaty which just uses words to try to describe it. I think describing it on the basis of effect is a very good definition.

There is no process for destruction described in the treaty. It s simply it must be destroyed.

BOB SHERMAN: The interpretation of the definition of anti-personnel, anti-handling that Bob Lawson just gave can certainly be justified by reading the Oslo text. There is another interpretation, which can also be justified, which says that if you had an anti-handling device that functions by just kicking the mine, if somebody walks along twenty years later, and runs into this anti-tank mine and kicks it and it explodes, that does not make it an anti-personnel mine.

And, I m not going to get into that debate. But many of the countries that are signing your treaty have told me very explicitly that they intend to follow that second definition and to continue to use anti-tank mines that have anti-handling devices which will explode if the mine is disturbed or kicked.

BOB LAWSON: I would say the citizens will hold them accountable.

JODY WILLIAMS: I ll attempt to answer the question about the effect of having the Campaign in the room. I would imagine that it had significant impact. The Campaign was in many of the rooms not officially in its name. Many governments had the courage to invite NGOs to be part of their delegations, so that throughout the process we were very aware of what was transpiring in the meetings. But it certainly was a breakthrough and very different to have this Campaign recognized as a legitimate participant and be given the same observer status as the ICRC.

I would imagine that it made it a little more difficult for any kind of backsliding to have us sitting there. In the minds of many governments, the Campaign does represent this sentiment of civil society. That s taken very seriously by governments. To have that weight sitting there at the back of the room was, I imagine made them think very carefully before they made statements or attempts to weaken the treaty. That would be my interpretation.

ANN GERTLER, Project Ploughshares, CANADA: ...I have a suggestion that the administration of the landmines ban follow the practice of the World Trade Organization, which makes nation-states responsible for everything that happens in the territory of their sovereignty. This would be expecting the States Party to prevent any non-state use of landmines.

BOB LAWSON: Right now the treaty does that. The implementation structure of the treaty calls the States accountable for all activities which occur under their jurisdiction or control. Now of course, jurisdiction and control is a bit of diplomatic art in terms of describing how much control you actually have over your territory. But, by and large, governments are obliged to impose penal sanctions on those who violate this treaty. So, all citizens, even if they do not consider themselves to be citizens of the state which has jurisdiction over the control of the territory in which they are residing, are obliged by this treaty.

GINNY SCHNEIDER, Alliance for Conventional Weapons Disarmament, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee in Western Massachusetts: ...I'd like to know what the Administration is doing to encourage trading partners, such as Russia and China, to sign the treaty?

BOB SHERMAN: The United States is not signing the treaty; therefore, we re not in any position to go around urging other countries to sign it. I mean, we re certainly happy if a country decides to sign it, but our international lobbying efforts, if you will, are going to be focused on CCW and getting ratification for that. It would be incongruous for us to urge countries, other than in a kind of one shot way, to sign a treaty that we re not signing ourselves.

GINNY SCHNEIDER: If all countries sign, what would be the problem of the US signing it?

BOB SHERMAN: Our policy since May 1996 has been that if there is a worldwide ban, that would include China and Russia, then we would sign it.

ROGER SMITH, NGO Committee on Disarmament:...I'd to know more specifically how you got observer status...And what suggestions might you have for NGOs working in other disarmament areas where there ve been such major obstacles to that sort of official access, particularly the anti-nuclear people who have run into many roadblocks trying to get that sort of observer status?

STEVE GOOSE: ...Part of the answer might be that this won t apply. We hope that we have established a precedent that will allow greater NGO-government participation, but the way that this developed has a lot to do with things that are specific to anti-personnel landmines. NGOs have always been viewed differently by governments on this issue. It was NGOs, and especially the International Campaign, that brought this issue to the attention of governments when they weren t paying attention in the late eighties and early nineties. NGOs have served to educate governments on this issue from the very beginning, telling them things they didn t know.

NGOs were in the field removing landmines. NGOs were and are in the field treating landmine victims. NGOs, such as my own Human Rights Watch, undertook investigative missions; identifying the impact of landmines on civilians; identifying who was producing landmines; who was trading landmines. Our facts and statistics on this became the ones that governments looked to.

So, we had a lot to bring to the table in a very real way. The governments, especially in the early years, viewed the Campaign, viewed NGOs, as the experts on this issue. And, so they were willing to talk to us, willing to treat us seriously from the very beginning.

That's probably the crux of the answer. Beyond that, it also has to do with the way the Campaign has conducted itself. Yes, we have, from time to time engaged in something akin to guerrilla tactics and we have been sharp. But, we ve also tried to talk in a reasonable fashion to governments about issues they care about: about the military utility, to try and understand their arguments, to counter them in a reasonable fashion, based on good research, good data.

And lastly, they probably have taken us seriously because we have Nobel Peace Prize-quality people working on this Campaign, like Jody Williams.

SONYA OSTROM, Peace Action: Mr. Sherman,what will happen when Congress passes a bill saying that we should ban all landmines? Will that change Clinton s mind and yours?

ASIM MIAN, News International: India and Pakistan are not signing the anti-mine agreement. They are not a part of the Ottawa Process. Taking advantage of the Nobel Peace Prize, would you like to visit that area, where along the borders those mines are spread and every years hundreds of people get destroyed and, especially, as some of the panelists said, the marginalized people? Would you visit that area to launch a campaign and popularize your mission over there?

DORRIE WEISS, ECAAR (Economists Allied for Arms Reduction: One of my arguments has always been that you re not going to succeed in stopping some of this stuff unless you attack from the supply side. I know that Human Rights Watch has done some of that by having a campaign in which they publicized those people, those organizations, that were manufacturing parts for armaments. I wondered how successful they were.

GILBERT, WEDO (Women's Environment and Development Organization): I would like to hear your remarks about the role of civil society. Our organization and many other NGOs are involved in a big UN reform effort, which would give us greatly expanded access to the General Assembly and other UN processes so that our voices can be heard. Cnsidering that so many of the victims of landmines are women and children, to what extent are women s organizations working in your Campaign?

ERYL COURT, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Unitarian Universalist UN Office: To my mind, every weapon represents a crime against humanity, every form of violence, whether it s napalm, landmines, and so forth. I would appreciate a comment from some on our advance, generally, in outlawing all weapons, general and complete disarmament, and establishing the rule of law as opposed to the rule of force in the world. Thank you.

BOB SHERMAN: Senators Leahy and Hagel and Congressman Quinn and Evans have introduced legislation that would basically, unilaterally, impose the Ottawa restrictions on the United States. Obviously, if Congress passes a law, the Administration will obey it. I have spent twenty-five years on Congressional staff. My assessment of the situation as it stands now is that the prospects for that legislation passing are not very good and are declining. One of the more significant developments on that is that General Schwartzkopf, whose signature on a New York Times ad favoring a ban, was a political masterstroke by Jody, I guess. Almost immediately after that, General Schwartzkopf started saying he was misrepresented. He only meant to have a ban on long-lived mines, but he wouldn t say that publicly. A month or so ago, he did say it to The Baltimore Sun and I expect he ll be saying it again. And the impact of that on the Congress, I would expect, would be large. For various other reasons, if I were to bet right now, I would bet that that legislation is not going to become law.

STEVE GOOSE: We did identify forty-eight US companies that manufacture landmines, or components for anti-personnel landmines. And one of the fascinating things was engaging in the dialogue with those companies, telling them we re going to produce a report identifying them as a manufacturer and then stigmatize them and harass them, if they did not promise to get out of the business. Seventeen of those forty-eight have promised to no longer engage in any production of anti-personnel landmines. So it s been quite successful. For the future, we ll continue to work on these US companies, but we re also busy identifying companies in foreign countries engaged in the business, and we ll try and duplicate that effort in other locations.

JODY WILLIAMS: Regarding India and Pakistan, the Campaign has developed strategy for universalizing this treaty. It includes going to regions of the world that are not yet on board. We re going to be doing in the post-Ottawa period the same things we did in the years leading up to Ottawa. We plan to go to South Korea in early 1998. We re holding a regional meeting in Hungary in March. We re going to Moscow in May, and it looks like our fifth International Conference will be in India in the fall. We have no intention of letting the others off the hook.

Regarding women: Of course women s organizations are involved. It s a huge, broad-based coalition representing, you know, human rights groups, arms control groups, children s rights groups, etc. Individually, there are many women who have leadership roles in different parts of this Campaign. I think of: Celena Tuttle who started up the Campaign in Canada; Nicoletta Dentico in Italy; Patricia Pak Poy in Australia; Sister Denise Coughlan in Cambodia; and Sok Eng in Cambodia. There re women involved in this at all levels.

BOB LAWSON: The march towards general and complete disarmament is going to be a long one. I think we all recognize that. But, I m not one of those individuals who s prepared to be cynical about it. I m also not cynical about UN resolutions. I m not cynical about the UN. I m very optimistic that multilateral organizations can work, maybe not as quickly as we would like, but they can work.

And, the collective will of the international community can work. People said last year we re going to implement a UN resolution, UN Resolution 51/45/S, which called for a negotiated agreement to ban anti-personnel mines as soon as possible. We thought a year was pretty close to as soon as possible. And, we ve implemented that resolution.

It's worthwhile to retain a bit of idealism about the UN and what it can accomplish and what UN resolutions mean. I think we re one weapon system down with many to go.

ANN LAKHDHIR: I thank you all very much. I think this is the third or the fourth that we ve held on this topic. Let s hope there will be even more progress a year from now.