Princess in armour put focus on mines

There are an estimated 100 million anti-personnel landmines scattered around the world in 71 countries and they kill or maim - usually maim - an estimated 20,000 people a year, mostly civilians in the poorest areas of the world.

As the Red Cross, which has been in the forefront of the campaign against such mines said recently, they are "fighters that never miss, strike blindly, do not carry weapons openly, and go on killing long after hostilities are ended. In short, mines are the greatest violators of international humanitarian law. They are the most ruthless of terrorists".

The Princess of Wales's visit to Angola in January, in support of the Red Cross campaign, raised its profile dramatically. Pictures of the Princess wearing body armour and a helmet with a visor, learning how to dispose of mines, and of the ghastly injuries inflicted on civilians, particularly children, contributed to growing pressure for a world-wide ban.

Angola is probably the most mined country in the world, with an astonishing one-and-a-half mines per inhabitant, or 10 to 15 million mines in all. More than 30,000 Angolans have had limbs amputated as a result of mine explosions.

Martin Bell, the new independent MP for Tatton, said in his inaugural speech on Tuesday, "they are laid by soldiers against soldiers, but their principal victims are nearly always civilians and two categories of civilians - farmers and children".

Anti-personnel mines are small devices which explode into fragments when detonated by their victim. They can be placed on stakes, scattered over the ground or buried slightly below it, and can be detonated by trip-wires, by pressure or just by being touched. The brightly coloured "butterfly" mine, the most common found in Afghanistan, is particularly attractive to young children, who think it is a toy. Many have lost a hand, an arms, eyes or a face to those "toys".

The Government's announcement of a total ban on the import, export, manufacture and transfer of anti-personnel landmines and components for them marks a victory for a coordinated campaign run by the UK Working Group on Land Mines. Many organisations have been involved, including the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Oxfam, Save the Children, Action Aid, Christian Aid and, most active, the Red Cross.

One of the key problems in trying to ban anti-personnel land mines is defining what exactly they are. Anti-tank mines, which only go off when a heavy weight is driven over them, are seen as legitimate weapons of war. But one of the British Army's mines, the L27, an anti-tank mine placed to one side of a road, could be set off by a person - and has therefore been re-classified as an anti-personnel mine. By a bizarre quirk of fate, the most dramatic effect of the Government's moratorium on the use of anti-personnel weapons will be that the Royal Air Force cannot use its JP-233 airfield denial weapon - because as well as bombs to blow holes in runways it contains small anti-personnel mines - HB 876 - to impede the runways' repair. The Government has now classified HB-876 as an anti- personnel weapon, and so its use is banned. JP-233, which has to be delivered from very low level - was the main reason why the RAF made a speciality out of low-level attack, and why it sustained such heavy losses in the 1991 Gulf War.

In practice, the Government's announcement yesterday was aimed at other countries.

British forces have used mines in two recent wars: the Falklands in 1982 and the Gulf in 1991, and obeyed the rules of war which demand that minefields be clearly marked and recorded, and cleared the fields up afterwards. The most significant message will be to give a lead to the movement for an international ban. Fifty countries took part in the international conference in Ottawa in October last year. The Ottawa Group committed itself to the earliest possible date to ban the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of such mines.

The Foreign Office says Britain has not made or exported any mine since 1982, although the UK Working Group disputes that. Some British companies, including Ferranti and Marconi, have been accused of making mine fusing systems. Under the new rules announced yesterday, manufacture of components, as well as whole mines, is also banned.