MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

UK granted ten year extension to clear Falklands minefields

Duncan: 'Ten years won't be enough: blame it on peat'

The States Parties to the Ottawa Convention for the elimination of anti personnel mines granted Friday the United Kingdom a ten year extension to the deadline for the clearance of minefields on the disputed Falkland Islands.

"After a difficult week of discussions about the UK request for an extension to the deadline to clear the minefields on the Falkland Islands, the meeting in Geneva today agreed to extend the deadline for completing this task by a further ten years in response to the UK offer to begin clearing three minefields immediately and report back on progress", said ambassador John Duncan. On Thursday Ambassador Duncan said, beginning next year, the UK would start to clear land mines left by Argentina on the Falklands during the 1982 conflict, although by the time the tender process and appointments are made a full year could evolve. However he also added that "it is still not clear that it will in fact be possible to clear all the Falklands' minefields given that so many are located in terrain (peat) that has never been successfully cleared before. But mine-clearing technology is improving all the time". In spite of the good result for the UK, Ambassador Duncan said that it was "a little disappointing that many countries chose to expend so much energy on challenging the UK request rather than focussing their attention on finding ways to clear those areas where there is a real need and where innocent civilians are suffering from the effects of these terrible weapons". "Such is the nature of multilateral diplomacy where it is a constant battle to keep the focus on the real world issue, but I am sure readers would agree it is always worth the effort", admitted the UK representative. Britain currently has a ten year deadline to clear all the Falkland Islands mines under the treaty and reports every year to the UN conference on progress made. The new deadline is an extension from the March 2009 deadline under the treaty that Britain previously said it would miss. "We have been working with Argentina over the past two years to try and find out how we're going to do this," said Duncan. The joint study "took a long time because of course it is a sovereignty question," he added. "Based on the findings of the Feasibility Study the UK requested a ten-year extension as the report made clear that de-mining in the Falkland Islands would be challenging and full clearance would take at least ten years", revealed Ambassador Duncan.