GLOBAL DEMINING SURVEY TO MAP COUNTRIES FOR CLEARANCE EFFORT

By Susan Ellis
USIA Staff Writer

Washington -- "We've been operating in the dark for the last 10 years" in terms of having a definitive global survey on the scope of the problem of hidden landmines, according to an official of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

VVAF co-director Bob Eaton, whose group is dedicated to clearing landmines around the world, told members of the National Press Club May 13: "In a terrible sense, it's a triage problem. We can't do enough in Mozambique; we can't do enough in Angola, but if there's (only) a certain amount of resources, we have to figure out the most rational way to apportion them and that we don't know right now."

A global survey of the problem is crucial to the efforts of the VVAF and other organizations pursuing similar eradication efforts, he said.

In 1997 Eaton began helping direct a survey of United Nations demining operations in several countries to assess what works most effectively in these "often costly and dangerous programs." He said a major thrust of the U.S. government-sponsored Washington Conference on Global Humanitarian Demining to be held May 20-22 is to focus on moving forward on a "global level one survey" for humanitarian demining. The conference will seek an infrastructure for gathering baseline data on where the mines are; in what number, and in which countries.

"The first level of the survey should be finished in 18 months," Eaton said, "because we have to get this data out on the table on a crash basis so everybody can look at it and begin to say: Have we got the right proportional expenditures between Angola and Mozambique?"

He said the international community is supporting mine clearance in approximately 10 countries in a significant way. "The major countries would be, in chronological order of where the problem started: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Angola, and Mozambique. These are probably the worst affected countries, but we can't be totally sure. No serious survey has been done.

"Then we go to countries like Western Sahara or Chad, and nobody's got a clue, because we don't even have demining units working there right now," he continued. "But we know there are victims and we've got to get survey units into there. There are whole sections of the world right now which are unexplored in this regard. We do know communities are at risk and rural people are being blown apart and maimed by these things."

In answer to a question from a reporter on how one gathers data for the survey, Eaton said: "You get your information wherever you can: from government, from ministries of health, from hospitals, from military units -- regular or irregular -- that are willing to cooperate. And of course most directly, by going down to the village level and talking to people."

In an effort to reach out more broadly to the American public Robert Muller, founder and president of the VVAF, said his organization has adopted a new "broader banner... more reflective of the breadth of concern around landmines: Campaign for a Landmine Free World." Muller, who returned from the Vietnam War a paraplegic as a result of combat injuries, said many Americans "aren't comfortable with something that's truly political," but are more comfortable with direct support for a humanitarian effort.

"We need to increase public awareness and support for our efforts with regard to not only seeing the weapon effectively banned, but to move forward with cleaning up the countries that are themselves crippled by landmines," he said.

Anti-personnel landmines (APL) have created more casualties than the combined use of chemical and nuclear weapons throughout history, Muller said, causing "hundreds of thousands of landmine victims around the world, mostly innocent civilians." He described APL as a weapon of mass destruction working "in slow motion."

U.S. Army General (retired) Robert Gard, an advisor to the VVAF, responded to a question about the seemingly primitive means of landmine removal and possible alternatives to landmines. He said one must distinguish between the "military objective of getting a corridor through the minefield so you can move your troops and equipment (and) having to demine an area so it's completely safe for civilian use."

Gard said most research has been on "how to breach a mine and that technology is inadequate for clearing a mine, and therefore you see people with those probes which is the only way now. We don't have a mine detector. We have metal detectors" which cannot tell the difference between a mine and metal fragments. "I've been told there's nothing really promising near term that's going to enable us to solve this problem technically."

Muller said most demining is done by civilians -- former military personnel -- except in Vietnam where Vietnamese troops do the job. He said the VVAF assists victims of landmines in Cambodia, Angola, Vietnam and El Salvador with programs designed to address country-specific needs. "We've manufactured thousands of artificial limbs, wheelchairs, and have put together support programs for these victims. Those programs need to be expanded, they need increased public support and we need continuing research into the best ways to provide adaptive devices for mobility-impaired people," he said.