Washington -- A key priority of the U.S. government in helping demining efforts around the world is to address the increasing problem of insurgency groups that are interested in creating unrest in some countries, Ambassador Donald Steinberg told members of the international news media April 28.

The ambassador spoke at USIA's Foreign Press Center in advance of the first Meeting of States Parties to the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction, to be held in Maputo, Mozambique, May 3-7.

Steinberg, special representative to the President and Secretary of State for Global Humanitarian Demining, said the insurgency groups are "not necessarily planting landmines even for a military purpose, but to threaten civilians to create a sense of chaos and disorder."

However, he noted that "in terms of the new laying of landmines," the vast majority of mines that are causing problems around the world are not recently produced items. They are drawn from various stockpiles held around the world, he added.

"I have heard estimates of up to 250 million landmines being held in stockpiles, and these would be military stockpiles in most cases, which are then in many cases made available on the international market," he said.

Within the Ottawa Convention, there is a requirement for the destruction of existing stockpiles of weapons, Steinberg said, adding that the United States is looking into various means by which "we can support that effort of destruction of stockpiles when countries express a desire for assistance."

A current "very relevant case" involves the government of Ukraine which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Canada for the destruction of its stockpiles of landmines, he said.

Steinberg noted that he and Colonel Mark Adams, deputy director of the State Department's Humanitarian Demining Programs Office, participated in a conference in Mexico City last January during which the Nicaraguan government announced it was "anxious to destroy very quickly all of the existing stockpile that they have."

The United States has not only the resources but the technologies that could be brought to bear in this area, he added, since over the last three years the U.S. military has destroyed more than 3.3 million of its stockpiled landmines.

On the subject of Kosovo, Steinberg said the Maputo conference will discuss mine action in relation to the conflict there "once the situation there allows us to address these problems.

"We are very concerned about reports of the use of landmines in Kosovo by the Serbians (and)...extremely moved" by reports of victims of mine accidents, Steinberg said. "The United States is already planning how to assist not only the entry of some force that will administer that territory if an agreement is reached," but also "the means of reinserting refugees in the area once the situation allows that."

He said discussions are under way on the possibility of establishing an ad hoc emergency group to go into Kosovo and assist the effort of demining as well as the clearance of unexploded ordnance.

He added that the United States government is joining the international community and the United Nations Mine Action Service in looking at programs to assist mine awareness among refugees so that they can identify and avoid these weapons.

Asked about the U.S. refusal to sign the Ottawa Convention in 1997 to ban all landmines, Steinberg said the United States welcomes the humanitarian effort now under way globally to address the tragedy of landmines that is relevant to the Ottawa Convention.

However, he said, during the negotiations in 1997, the United States sought two changes in the Convention that would have permitted its signing.

"First, an adequate transition period for the ban on anti-personnel landmines; second, we sought an exemption for the anti-tank system that we now use that included within it an element that is banned under the treaty as currently defined. It is a self-destructing component that will destroy itself after four or six or eight hours, that is used to protect the anti-tank mine itself."

Steinberg said that since the United States has never had a case anywhere where a civilian has been injured by a self-destructing element of an anti-tank mine, "We did not think that that was an appropriate ban. Regrettably, those changes could not be accommodated and therefore we have not signed the agreement."

He added that the changes were deemed necessary because of the United States' "unique responsibilities around the world; (and) for national security, including assistance to a number of friends and allies, notably in (South) Korea."

However, he noted, consistent with some of the goals of the Ottawa Convention, in 1997 President Clinton announced a permanent ban on the export or transfer of anti-personnel landmines.

Since 1996, the United States has destroyed 3.3 million -- all of the nation's non-self-destructing landmines except those needed in South Korea and for testing.

The United States has pledged that it will end the use of purely anti-personnel landmines outside of South Korea by the year 2003 and has "launched an aggressive effort to find alternates to landmines, and if we are successful in identifying and fielding those alternatives, by the year 2006 we will indeed adhere to the agreement," Steinberg said.

"Further, we are urging our Congress to ratify the Landmines Amended Protocol as part of the Convention on Conventional Weapons, and we are working on countries around the world to urge them to take similar steps."

There are some success stories on demining progress, Steinberg said. In Cambodia the international community's support of that government's efforts has resulted in the decline in accidents from landmines from 500 a month in 1992 to about 50 a month today -- "which means that each month 450 young children, women and men are not suffering the same fate they did six years ago," he said.

In Afghanistan, 93 percent of all demined territory is currently under production by farmers and other cultivators. In Mozambique, 6,000 kilometers of roads have been demined, allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people to return to their homes.

Steinberg also reported "similar success stories in Rwanda, in Namibia, (and) in Central America, where if it had not been for Hurricane Mitch, we believe that by the end of next year" those countries would have been declared mine-safe.