Washington -- "The landmines are not in New York City, nor in Brussels, nor in Washington, D.C. They are usually found in countries in transition, countries recovering from years of strife, or countries with very limited national resources," a State Department expert on humanitarian demining told colleagues June 17.

Colonel G.K. Cunningham, deputy director of the Humanitarian Demining Programs Office in the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, added: "Mine action is not a matter of numbers of landmines, nor real estate, nor roads and dams, but rather a matter of keeping our fellow human beings from harm and death. Let us undertake this effort with their betterment in mind, not our own profitability -- whatever form that profitability might take."

His forum was a one-day conference on Spending and Technology Priorities of efforts to clear landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) around the world, sponsored by Jane's Information Group. Jane's is the publisher of definitive information on defense, aerospace and transportation-related industries for the world's militaries, governments, universities and businesses.

Cunningham reminded the audience that the United States is committed to the goal of eliminating the threat of landmines to civilians by the year 2010.

"A multiplicity of factors must be taken into account whenever a strategic plan is devised for clearance operations," the Marine Corps officer noted. "The whole social, political, geographical, and economic fabric of a country determines its unique national identity." Therefore, he added, it is essential to build indigenous capacity and to establish a national demining center "staffed and managed by indigenous personnel" in order to address "that individual country's specific mine or unexploded ordnance challenge."

Cunningham listed contributions to mine action from international organizations like the United Nations and Organization of American States; nongovernmental organizations (in advocacy, victims assistance and mine awareness education); commercial contractors who do area and route clearance; and governments "as donor nations, applying both civilian and military resources."

He cited the role of individuals as consultants and experts, pointing out "James Madison University (in the state of Virginia) will soon accredit its first graduate degree in the area of humanitarian demining."

Another speaker, Ben Lark, mine action coordinator of Handicap International, based in Lyon, France, echoed a sentiment from Cunningham's remarks that "It is only at the local level that data really translates into work."

True mine action, Lark maintained, is applicable to village level work in countries like Laos and Cambodia. "We talk about going in there and helping a Lao farmer who finds bullets in his field when he's trying to plow it, to seed it. Going in and helping people like that at the village level.

"The only way we can understand the way mines and UXO are impacting these people is to get into those villages at ground level and spend a lot of time with them; talk to them; not just the headman. Talk to the women's groups; talk to the chief of police; talk to the veterans' society, it really doesn't matter. They all have different problems. This has to be done because only when we understand (their problems) can we understand how best to tackle them," Lark said.

He said much demining is conducted by former military people such as himself, but said flexibility is required in carrying out projects. For example, he cited the example of a village where there is no clean water "because there are four meters of mined ground between the road and the well. You don't need to put a platoon in there to clear that small area. You can't break a platoon down.

"We need to look toward a smaller team-oriented approach where you have teams of maybe 10 men, each with a medic; each with a radio; and each with transportation. They can either be combined of even company-size or broken down into section size. That's what we're there for -- to help those people in villages. And we're failing in many cases (through lack of flexibility)."

"Civil-military cooperation is absolutely essential for resolution of this crisis," said Deborah G. Rosenblum, director, Humanitarian Assistance & Anti-Personnel Landmine Policy in the Defense Department's Office of Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Affairs. One of 11 speakers at the conference from the Defense and State Departments, the United Nations, Handicap International, and the Republic of Croatia, she said a critical component of resolving the crisis is return of the land to productive use.

"Public and private partnerships bring a whole host of benefits to our demining efforts," she said. "They help inform the world of the crisis and increase the availability of resources. We also believe that effective partnerships will help us avoid wasted action on everyone's part by capitalizing on our mutually supporting strengths."

She said examples of recent successes of public-private partnerships include the publication by UNICEF and Time-Warner of comic books in English and Spanish depicting the danger of landmines, as well as "the cooperative training conducted by the United States and Halo International (a British-based demining group) in Mozambique."

Returning the land to the people is also one project of the Defense Department's Joint UXO Coordination Office, said its director, Christopher C. O'Donnell.

In an interview after the conference, he said one of the "biggest technology challenges" his office has in the next five years is to develop an "airborne capability to tell when mines are not there so that people can go ahead and put the land to other uses." He said his department is developing a "cam-copter" which officials hope will be able to "do a quick airborne survey" for that purpose.

O'Donnell said the Defense Department also wants to take some of its current capabilities with inductance locaters or magnetometers to "do a better job of understanding what kind of responses we get back from landmines and UXO." The ultimate goal is to put the deminer or UXO neutralizer at greater distance from the explosive device.

Currently, he said, "We use the operator as the main way of determining (often with hand-held probes) if there's a target in the ground. What we'd like to do is to be able to help the operator by giving him more information about the target in the ground using computer processing," thereby possibly enabling him or her to "influence the UXO or the landmine from a greater distance away to increase the operator's safety."

The "biggest payoff in the short term," he added, is being able to use more than one sensor at a time and "play off of this ability to use computers to process the data and give (deminers) a better answer. So not only will the people be satisfied that their land is cleared, they'll get a picture beforehand and after of what's been done. You'll be able to see color representations of the anomalies, and after the clearance is done, you'll show the person a picture that says: 'See, here is where we found all the targets and now you can see that they've all been cleared.'"

O'Donnell pointed out "It's no longer just the military looking at this problem but we're getting serious people from academia and contractors involved, so that whatever we do develop will get out to the people's hands immediately."