Washington -- The U.S. Special Representative to the President and the Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining says the international community needs "to demine quickly, but...smartly" in Kosovo by focusing on clearing mines in locations such as water storage areas, marketplaces and schools.

Ambassador Donald Steinberg told reporters at the State Department on June 25 that the existence of mines and booby traps laid by Federal Republic of Yugoslavia military and paramilitary forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, in combination with unexploded NATO ordnance, pose a grave risk to Kosovo Albanian refugees returning from neighboring countries as well as people who were displaced from their homes but remained inside the province. Those who go back home ahead of deminers are "at risk," he said.

Having just returned from a two-week mission to southern Kosovo, Albania, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Steinberg said mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are likely to be "an everyday fact of life for the Kosovar people for some three to five years." Despite warnings from President Clinton, international aid agencies, and non-government organizations, he said, some 250,000 refugees have already returned to Kosovo, and he predicted that there will be more land mine victims. There have been some two dozen accidents already.

While the United States supports humanitarian demining operations in about 30 countries around the world, Steinberg said in a few months "Kosovo has risen to the top of our agenda." Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Security Operations Robert Beecroft addressed the issue of Kosovo demining efforts along with Steinberg. He said U.S. and other humanitarian demining operations will be implemented through the UN Mine Action Coordination Center, and the focus will be on mine awareness, surveys, and clearance.

Beecroft said the United States is providing $1.6 million for humanitarian demining operations in Kosovo in Fiscal Year 1999. The money is not being drawn away from other countries' programs, but is being funded through the Support for Eastern European Democracy (SEED) program.

KFOR, NATO's Kosovo peacekeeping force, has begun to clear mines and UXO on the roads and bridges needed for the deployment of its troops and equipment. In the meantime, organizations such as Norwegian People's Aid, the Mines Advisory Group, and The HALO Trust have sent mine clearing experts to the region to augment KFOR, but they cannot begin work until NATO indicates that security conditions have stabilized sufficiently.

Following is a transcript of the briefing:

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesman

June 25, 1999

ON-THE-RECORD BRIEFING BY AMBASSADOR DONALD K. STEINBERG, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE PRESIDENT AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR GLOBAL HUMANITARIAN DEMINING AND ROBERT M. BEECROFT, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR SECURITY OPERATIONS ON DEMINING IN KOSOVO

Washington, D.C.

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: As Special Representative of the President and the Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining, you might say my day job is to implement the President's Demining 2010 initiative. This is the initiative which is designed to help create a condition in which land mines no longer threaten civilians around the world by the end of the next decade.

However, over the past few months, in support of the State Department Political-Military Bureau and others, much of my work has been concentrated on creating the conditions in Kosovo that will allow for the safe return of the refugees with respect to land mines, unexploded ordnance and booby-traps. I've just returned from a two-week mission to Albania, Macedonia and briefly to Southern Kosovo, and I wanted to share a few points with you regarding that mission. Deputy Assistant Secretary Beecroft will then go into greater detail on the American response to the situation.

First, while the picture of conditions on the ground is only now emerging, it is clear that the combination of extensive Serb mine fields planted along virtually the whole southern border, KLA, Serb and NATO unexploded ordnance -- including cluster bombs, and mines and booby-traps laid by the Serb and KLA military and paramilitary forces -- have made Kosovo among the world's most dangerous real estate. To put this in perspective, the United States has programs in about 30 countries around the world to assist mine clearance, mine awareness and survivors assistance. In the space of a few months, Kosovo has risen to the top of our agenda.

Despite warnings to the contrary, including from President Clinton himself, many refugees took the entry of NATO forces into Kosovo over the past 10 days as a sign that it's safe to return. In the refugee camps on the borders of Albania and Macedonia, I spoke with the Kosovar people, and despite the fact that they told us that they understood the need to be patient and prudent and let NATO and private deminers secure the terrain, it was clear that they were returning very quickly. And, indeed, about 250,000 of them have already returned.

There are four requirements for ensuring the safe return of the Kosovars. First, until security conditions allow us to proceed with full demining -- and when I say us, I mean the international community -- a key focus has to be mine awareness, so that the returnees know exactly what they're facing when they go home and how they should react. UNICEF has blanketed the region now with a million posters and pamphlets, similar to what we have here. NATO and the UNHCR are using radio messages, and even Superman is about to get into the act, as Mr. Beecroft will describe.

Regrettably, we estimate that mines and unexploded ordnance will be an everyday fact of life for the Kosovar people for some three to five years. Because of that, all the children, and even their parents, must be empowered to protect themselves through radio messages, school curricula, theater groups and other means. I've just concluded three years in Angola, and every school child in Angola sings songs about land mines, learns about them in school, plays games, sees dance troops, theater groups, puppet shows, et cetera. Unfortunately, the reality in Kosovo will have to be the same.

At the same time, NATO has begun to clear mines and unexploded ordnance on major roads, bridges and other sites that they need for their deployment. A large number of demining groups funded by a variety of countries, including the Norwegian Peoples Aid, the Mines Advisory Group, Help, Halo Trust and others, have transferred personnel to the region to extend the NATO efforts to emergency demining throughout Kosovo.

This is going to start as NATO gives the green light that the security conditions have stabilized in specific regions of the country. As I said, Mr. Beecroft will go into detail regarding our own contract with RONCO Corporation to perform a variety of demining services.

Third, we need to demine quickly, but we also need to demine smartly. We need to focus emergency clearance on those areas through which the refugees will be returning, and we need to focus on schools, marketplaces, water supplies and other socioeconomic indicators.

For this reason, a leading British demining group, called Halo Trust, entered Kosovo literally when the NATO forces first entered, on June 13, and they are completing a comprehensive study to help us define our demining priorities. There should be some preliminary results from their work within a week. Fortunately, we received earlier this week, from the Serb forces, a number of maps to describe where their minefields are. NATO is now studying these.

I need to stress that all of these efforts are being well-coordinated with the international community, and especially to highlight the leadership that the United Nations Mine Action Service is providing, including the setting up now of a coordinating center in Pristina.

Finally, there will be more land mine accidents; we know that. And regrettably, this will be a situation that is going to dog that area for quite some time. Today, even a relatively minor accident in Kosovo would be fatal. Because of this, USAID and the State Department are supporting emergency mobile medical facilities with trauma care capability as a temporary measure until health facilities can be established.

In summary, let me say that the conditions for the safe return of refugees to much of Kosovo do not exist at present. There's no clearer demonstration of that fact than the tragic deaths of the British peacekeepers in an accident with unexploded ordnance on Monday. Still, we know that the refugees are returning anyway, and we're committed to working with the United Nations, other bilateral donors, NATO and the Kosovar people themselves to ensure that the tragedy already suffered by the Kosovars is not multiplied by the tragedy of numerous land mine accidents.

Thank you; I look forward to taking some questions, but I'd like to first pass the podium to Deputy Assistant Secretary Beecroft.

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: Thank you, Ambassador Steinberg, and good afternoon.

Ambassador Steinberg and I have been closely allied in addressing various aspects of this terrible crisis. Let me make a few points of the programmatic side.

First of all, US humanitarian demining focuses on returning refugees and IDPs safely; that's the goal. KFOR, on the other hand, is responsible for military counter-mine operations in Kosovo; KFOR does not execute humanitarian demining operations as such. They clear their own lines of communication; that's what their piece of this pie amounts to.

The United States and other humanitarian demining operations will be implemented through the UN Mine Action Coordination Center, or MAC-C, in Kosovo, in three phases. The first phase will be mine awareness; the second, mine surveys; the third, mine clearance. This is obviously a long-term proposition.

A few general points about the US humanitarian demining program. It has four goals. The first is to reduce civilian land mine casualties; the second is to permit the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes; the third is to enhance economic and social stability; and the fourth is to establish an indigenous mine action capability.

Our humanitarian demining program began in 1993 with eight countries. It now covers some 28, including some of the most seriously mine-effected countries in the world. The budget has grown from $10 million in 1993 to well over $100 million today. In Kosovo, the United States is providing in FY99 $1.6 million for humanitarian demining operations. This money is drawn from a supplemental appropriation to the Department of State through the so-called SEED, or Support for Eastern European Democracy Act. The US has already been in the process of funding mine awareness campaigns through UNICEF in Albania and Macedonia to a cost of $343,000.

As Don Steinberg mentioned, the Department of Defense, in coordination with UNICEF, is also producing 500,000 Superman mine awareness comic books -- I have five of them in English here, which I'll leave for you to look at -- including little stickers and posters. In Albania, the translation is complete and they should be distributed within the next few days. They have been very effective in places such as Bosnia and Central America and we expect the same kind of attention in Kosovo.

The next step will be a level-one survey, so-called, of the extent of the land mine problem in Kosovo, which we are now in the process of elaborating with the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, or VVAF. This will begin as soon as KFOR gives us the green light. For your information, a level-one survey consists of an initial effort to locate land mines, to determine which areas are affected and, more important, not affected. A level two survey, which obviously is more elaborate, consists of marking and delineating specific minefields.

The United States has let a contract with Ronco, which is an experienced civilian demining contractor headquartered here in Washington, to provide six experienced and well-equipped mine clearance teams, including detection dogs and handlers. This will total some 75 deminers and support staff, including 12 dogs and handlers, medics and technicians. This force is being drawn from a ready pool of personnel that already exists in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Croatia. These people have already been trained by US military experts and experts of other donor nations.

The US has already provided an expert from my office to Pristina, and another will be joining him soon to facilitate the RONCO team's arrival at the earliest possible moment. This will, of course, be coordinated closely with the UN Mine Action Coordination Center in Pristina.

I'd like to stress, in closing, that the United States is not diverting funds from other demining programs around the world as we undertake this effort. We're making a maximum effort to keep other programs at their current levels, or even increase them. We are also prepared to provide humanitarian demining assistance not only to Kosovo, but to Albania and Montenegro in FY 2000 as and if required.

> Thank you very much. I'd be pleased to take your questions, along with Ambassador Steinberg.

Q: What prospect do you have for fulfilling the goal of ridding the world of land mines by the year 2010?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: The goal is not to eliminate all land mines around the world by the year 2010; it's to eliminate the threat of land mines to civilians. It would be impossible for us to eliminate 60 million to 70 million land mines which are currently planted. But what we can do is identify those land mines that threaten civilians. We can mark other areas and they will simply be no-go areas. So there's a distinction that we have between mine-free and mine-safe.

Indeed, there are a number of success stories that are now emerging. In Cambodia, for example, there has been a 90 percent drop in the number of victims of land mine accidents since 1992; down from 500 a month to just 50 a month. In Mozambique, we are seeing literally thousands of miles of highways freed of land mines; such that we have had more than 100,000 internally displaced people return to their homes. In Afghanistan, a country that is still racked by chaos, we have seen literally tens of thousands of hectares of farmland demined and returned to productive use. Namibia, Rwanda, Central America are other success stories in the making.

I also wanted to highlight just in a little bit of detail the assistance that we're providing worldwide to humanitarian demining. Under the State Department budget that you have in front of you, we are providing about $35 million to demining activities and mine awareness programs. In addition, the Pentagon provides about $20 million to $25 million to help train foreign deminers in the humanitarian area, as well as to conduct mine awareness programs. We have another $14 million specifically for the Slovenia trust fund to help demine in the Balkans. We have about $25 million that we're devoting to research and development in new technologies for demining, and an additional $10 million to $12 million under the Leahy War Victims Fund, which assists the victims of land mine accidents. There are about 300,000 of those around the world. In Angola alone, every day you were faced with the specter of 80,000 amputees from land mine accidents; literally hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes by these weapons, and the entire country facing the economic and psychological implications of land mines.

So we have a devoted effort worldwide to achieve this goal. It's going to be a hard effort, but drawing on not only US government resources, but the resources of other countries as well, who are also contributing, and some public/private partnerships, which I may go into a little later, if people are interested This goal is achievable.

Q: Do you know how many mine accidents -- how many people have been injured or killed by the mines in Kosovo?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: The reports we have are a little sketchy, but we believe that there have been about two dozen land mine accidents so far. Obviously, the one that was most prominent was the British peacekeepers on Monday. There were very early on some accidents. Literally two hours after the entry of the British forces, a car followed them, went off the road and blew up. In addition, some Kosovars returning to Macedonia were not able to go through the check-point and had to go over the mountains, and did have land mine accidents. I believe one of them was killed.

Q: The US forces involved in demining only clear them in the US sector, or is there some --

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: No. Initially, the US sponsored deminers will begin their work in the US sector. But I expect that within a very short time, certainly less than two weeks after they get underway, they will begin to spread out to other areas. Remember, Pristina itself, is not in the US sector. So the short answer is no.

Q: The Germans have come up with this huge machine which threshes through the -- is that being used now?

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: To my knowledge, it is not because the deminers -- with the exception of the KFOR deminers, who are working on their own lines of communication -- have not yet begun their work.

Now, I'll be in Germany -- in fact, we'll both be in Germany next Wednesday -- and we should be able to get more information then.

Q: Do you have any idea of the number of mines that you're facing?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: Not yet. We know that there are extensive minefields planted along the border with Albania and Macedonia. Those are anti-personnel land mines that were primarily planted in order to channel refugees. We also know that there's another line of minefields which are actually anti-tank minefields, which were intended to prevent the entry of a NATO force. Additionally, as I've said, we have serious problems with unexploded ordnance, and that is mostly in certain key areas; but indeed, there are a lot of those areas. So it's essentially around the country. The booby-trapping and planting of individual land mines is something that we're only learning about on an anecdotal basis.

But what, indeed, we've learned around the world, it is more important to consider what the implications of land mines are than the actual numbers. A single land mine can prevent an entire village from going back to their homes. A single land mine planted in a field will prevent that whole field from being cultivated. Indeed, you don't even need a single land mine; you simply need the fear of land mines.

So one of the things that Halo Trust is going to be doing in its original survey and then the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation will be doing, as well, in its survey, is a form of triage almost; to identify those areas of the country that are free of mines, unexploded ordnance and booby-traps. And indeed, the use of dogs is particularly effective to do almost negative verification.

Then there will be areas where there are mines, but they'll be located in regions that are not going to affect individuals. They'll be in the hills; they'll be in areas of marginal use. Those areas will simply be marked, signs put around it, and they will essentially be no-go areas; certainly in the first go-round.

But again, what we need to focus on are those areas which are going to affect the routes that the refugees are returning on, as well as the water supplies, the schools, the hospitals. That's, again, what is going to be so important to get from these initial surveys.

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: If I could just add that one thing we saw in Bosnia -- I was Chief of Mission in Sarajevo and saw it there, and I think we're seeing it again -- is that the tendency is not necessarily to plant land mines; it's to create booby-traps. Again, some cumulative and anecdotal evidence suggests that there will be a lot of booby-traps in which the mines aren't even put in the ground. They're just put in houses or installed with trip wires in ways that will cause maximum damage from mines that aren't even in the ground. This doesn't make it easier, it just makes the problem more complex. But again, we don't have a count.

Q: A couple things. One, based on what you've seen so far, I guess with the first 10 days or so, this operation with two dozen accidents with UXO land mines, do you have an estimate of how many you can expect a week or a month?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: Short answer is no -- it depends in large part on how effective the message is. The message is now being communicated that you leave the major roads and the major cities at your own peril. I would stress to you that the emergency demining capability that we have is going to focus on the real tough nuts to crack. The truth is the individual who goes off the main roads and goes back to his or her village before the deminers get there is at risk.

Q: But surely, if you're planning to send these emergency medical teams, you would have an idea of what the need is going -- you have some idea of what the needs is going to be? What are you planning for?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: There will be accidents; there is not question about that. But let me stress the emergency medical teams are not just going out for land mines. They're going out essentially because the health system in the country has deteriorated. So if they are facing any other type of trauma as well, they will handle that. But we're ensuring that they have the capability to address land mines as well.

Q: Well, I'm wondering -- you said there was some cumulative and anecdotal evidence that there will be a lot of booby-traps. I have a lot of experience in Cambodia. My experience there is that often times some of these are set by the people themselves for protection. Have you seen this; is this the case so far?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: We've heard of anecdotal evidence exactly in Kosovars who left their homes and essentially protected their homes by this exercise. But I would stress -- I think the vast majority of the booby-traps we're going to find were set by paramilitary forces, probably the Serbs.

Q: And one more, if I could -- sorry to take up so much time. The Pentagon, I think early this week or last week, said something about 11,000 dud mock cluster bombs. Do you have any idea of the kind of percentage the UXO problem is as compared to actual land mines? And is all of the UXO -- is it all NATO, or is there Serb, too?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: I said in my introductory comments that it is Serb, it is KLA, and it is also NATO unexploded ordnance. Indeed, in the posters that you see around the room, there's an emphasis on all of those categories.

The cluster bombs that are on the ground are a particularly dangerous element. They are, in some cases, small balls that are silver; in other cases, they look almost like soda cans, painted orange, in many cases, or yellow. They unfortunately are very attractive to young children, and as we've seen this last week -- and we don't really have complete information on what happened to the British peacekeepers, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that these were indeed these types of weapons. These are dangerous things.

I hadn't heard the figure of 11,000, but there is, in general, a dud rate that goes from 5 percent on upward. This will indeed be one very heavy focus of not only our mine awareness program, but our unexploded ordnance priorities.

Q: All three are in the comic book, as well? All three -- just mines in the comic book?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: What's in the comic book, that will be then supplemented by an additional page, is a listing of what you're going to see. In the comic book itself, it goes through a lot of the unexploded ordnance; it goes through land mines; it goes through booby-traps; and the unexploded ordnance are of various types.

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: Just a couple of points -- one of the challenges in Kosovo is going to be its very size. It's very small; it's about the size of Connecticut. So we're going to have not only refugees and IDPs wanting to go home and, in effect, testing the limits of what is doable, but you have the non-military NGOs and non-military but government-sponsored types who are going to be around, plus KFOR. So the density of people wanting to go somewhere on a relatively small number of roads is going to be a challenge.

Since you've been in Cambodia, you'll also be interested that some of the early deminers who were brought in by the British were Cambodians, including some who were amputees.

Q: Most of the conflicts in which land mines have been very extensively used have been very lengthy conflicts -- ones that have gone on for years, in many cases -- (inaudible) -- front lines between two forces. Is it possible that you will be pleasantly surprised in the case of Kosovo by how few mines there are, given the shortness of the conflict and the nature of the conflict?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: The short answer is yes, there is at least a possibility. Indeed, I met with the Halo Trust people last week and they were saying that that is a real possibility; that indeed, because not only the shortness of the conflict but the suddenness of the settlement, it means that we may, as you say, exactly, be pleasantly surprised. I think Deputy Assistant Secretary Beecroft and I, having served in two of those conflict countries -- Bosnia and Angola -- would recognize, however, that you have to prepare for the worst and that even being pleasantly surprised doesn't mean that you're not going to get land mine accidents. And we need to do everything possible to prevent this.

Q: Another question -- we often hear from senior US officials that the United States leads in humanitarian demining operations. I see you spend about $60 million a year, roughly. Is that, in fact, strictly accurate? Some people dispute this figure and say that other countries, some European countries have spent more.

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: I don't think anybody would dispute it, indeed. The $60 million that you have there is a very specific number that is narrowly defined. As I've indicated before, going through all the different numbers -- $35 million, $20 million, et cetera -- our total assistance is well over $100 million. That is clearly, by far, the largest contribution to this effort in the world. But I also have to stress to you that this isn't a competition. We are all working together with the United Nations, with other international bodies. This is a problem that is going to have to require perhaps up to $1 billion worth of resources a year. Indeed, that is the original figure that came out of the Washington Conference on Land Mines last year; that if we're going to achieve a mine-safe world by the year 2010, that level of resources is going to be required.

Let me take this opportunity just to talk a little bit about a source of some of that revenue, and that is a program that we are sponsoring with the United Nations Association and a group called the Humpty Dumpty Institute. This is called the Adopt-a-Minefield Program. I want to go into a little detail here.

We're working with the United Nations. We have identified around the world the 80 most dangerous minefields that the United Nations can demine. These are in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia and Mozambique. Then we have asked them to divide those minefields into chunks which would cost anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000 to demine. This program was launched March 9 and already, going around the country with church groups, with schools, with colleges, with private companies and with, in some cases, wealthy individuals, already about half of those minefields have been adopted. More than $1 million has been generated in just that short amount of time to demine little places in the world, make the world a little bit safer. I'm really pleased to note that Ted Turner, through the United Nations Foundation, has underwritten all of the administrative costs of that program. And in conversations today with the United Nations Association, we are talking about extending that program to Kosovo, so that Americans will be able to adopt minefields in Kosovo and allow the return of refugees to their homes.

Q: Do you know anything about -- the Serbs planted a lot of mines. Do you have any feel for how prolific the KLA was? Was that the first thing they did when they went into Kosovo?

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: Again, the evidence is anecdotal. The KLA certainly did not have access to the variety of mines that exist in the inventory of the V-J, the Serb Army. In fact, the Serbs produced their own land mines, and some of the more sophisticated ones in the world, including one that jumps up and explodes at waist height.

So I cannot give you an estimate except to say that the sheer variety and numbers of the inventory that the Serbs had at their disposal would suggest that they were the origin of the vast majority. The KLA would have had, in effect, to get them from the Serbs or some other outside source; not an easy thing to do under the circumstances.

Q: You mentioned dogs -- can dogs actually be trained to sniff out mines?

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: No, but they can do wonderful things. As Ambassador Steinberg said --

Q: (Inaudible) -- victims.

Q: I understand what you mean by negative verification, but also can they detect them?

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: Yes, yes. And what makes them particularly valuable is that they can sniff out land mines that are predominantly not metal, where a metal detector can do no good at all.

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: We have been spending a lot of time -- indeed, a lot of resources -- to replicate the nose of the dog because it is so effective in terms of identifying gun powder. They are trained, once they identify the gun powder, to go next to it and sit down and they are -- I've seen this literally all around the world. Indeed, RONCO has about 100, 120 of these dogs they're using around the world. And I wanted to take this opportunity to plug another public/private partnership. A group called the Marshall Legacy Institute has started a program called the Canine Corps, where, for a few thousand dollars, you can sponsor a dog who will be purchased, trained and deployed. They are even producing baseball cards where you have the picture of the dog on the front and on the back it has the statistics, it's weight, how many mines it has sniffed out, et cetera.

We are getting exceptionally strong support for this program from the Humane Society and that may sound contradictory until you think about it for a second. The estimate that we normally use is that about 20,000 people step on land mines each year and are either killed or maimed. But there is an estimate that about a half a million animals around the world step on land mines. And when they step on a land mine you can bet they don't get prosthetic devices; they don't get psychological training; they don't get reintegration assistance; they simply suffer and die. In addition, a number of the countries that are effected by land mines -- the people in those countries don't have a very good attitude towards animals, and in particular dogs. This is a way for the Humane Society to support a change in attitude towards dogs. This program is just getting off the ground, but it's a very exciting one.

Q: What kind of dogs do best?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: Any dog that's over 18 inches high can do this job. I have to be very honest with you that a lot of the people out in the field are embarrassed to admit this, but poodles are especially effective. You have former military people who are a little embarrassed about using poodles, and so you generally try to use some of the more macho dogs --

DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: But we are an equal opportunity canine employer.

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: Indeed, indeed. Thank you -- I appreciate that.

Q: Are dogs and metal detectors the two main means that will be used to try to detect the mines?

AMBASSADOR STEINBERG: At this point, yes, those are the two main devices you have. There was a question before about the use of larger equipment -- flails, and there are armored personnel carriers that go in with metal rollers in front of them that can blow up land mines. Those may be used as well. However, the terrain in Kosovo is particularly suited to those other techniques. You can't use flails and others in very hilly environments. But we also have to acknowledge that within about three months we're not going to be able to use much of anything, because you can't do much of this stuff during wintertime.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: One added point on that. Technology, dogs -- all of this is wonderful, but there are always occasions in demining when you have to go with human beings. I've watched Marines train in demining. The techniques are quite sophisticated, but basically there are times when you have to turn to the human being to poke and probe. Even after the dog has found it, it still has to be removed, and the dog can't do that. That's where it gets very perilous.

We learned a lot in Bosnia on this score, and I think a lot of those lessons learned are being applied in Kosovo -- both in terms of how we coordinate, how the military and civilian sides of the house work together and what techniques work and what don't. Because there is quite a bit of topographical similarity between Kosovo and parts of Bosnia.

Q: Will you use the same people?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY BEECROFT: Well, I think some of the same people.

AMBASSADOR STEINGERG: Sorry to do this tag-team routine here, but I wanted to add one thing because my geographer friends would not forgive me if we didn't. One of the other things we've learned in Bosnia that we're applying here is the use of cartography. And by this, what I mean is we have a computerized system now called the Geographic Information System. What you can do is you can get a map of Kosovo and then you can put on top of it, through computer-generated information, overlays. So what we will do is put the overlay of how the refugees plan to return to their home; we will put the overlay of where the mine fields are -- unexploded ordnance, et cetera; we will put an overlay of where the major schools and universities and hospitals are; we will put an overlay of where we have had land mine accidents.

Then you look down at all of that and it gives you a very good picture of where you should be focusing your efforts in terms of emergency demining capabilities. This is something that's new; this is something, indeed, that we have people on the ground right now, including the chief geographer for the State Department -- a man by the name of Bill Wood -- is now in Macedonia -- maybe in Pristina -- coordinating with NATO, coordinating with the United Nations Mine Action Service, coordinating with the NGOs -- to put together this vision of how our priorities should be.

Q: Thank you very much.

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