REVIEW CONFERENCE OF STATES PARTIES TO CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS CONVENTION VIENNA, 25 SEPTEMBER - 13 OCTOBER

17 October 1995

Press Release
DC/2535

REVIEW CONFERENCE OF STATES PARTIES TO CONVENTIONAL WEAPONS CONVENTION VIENNA, 25 SEPTEMBER - 13 OCTOBER

19951017 Adopts Ban on Use, Transfer of Blinding Laser Weapons, To Continue Negotiations on Land-Mine Protocol at Two Sessions Next Year

VIENNA, 13 October (UN Information Service) -- Having failed to reach agreement on a revised protocol on anti-personnel mines, States parties to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons this morning approved a new Protocol banning the use or transfer of blinding laser weapons and agreed to continue discussing land-mine questions at two further sessions to be held in Geneva next year.

Attended by 453 representatives of some 44 States parties and 40 observer nations in addition to non-governmental and intergovernmental organizations and programmes, the Convention's first Review Conference, which began on 25 September, had been scheduled to conclude its work today. With negotiations on land-mines deadlocked around primarily technical and military questions, it decided yesterday to suspend its work on that subject and reconvene in the near future.

Acknowledging that the land-mines question had garnered more headlines, the President of the Conference, Johan Molander (Sweden), nonetheless hailed the adoption of the Convention's new fourth Protocol on blinding lasers as an important development in international law. The text prohibits the use against the naked eye, or the naked eye with corrective glasses, of all laser weapons which have blinding as one of their combat functions. It also prohibits transferring them to any State or non-State entity. Sweden had earlier proposed a general ban on any weapon that resorted to blinding as a method of warfare, but the text adopted contained compromise language to avoid undue restriction of other military laser devices, including range-finders.

While there was general agreement during the Conference that the aim of a strengthened land-mine Protocol should be the eventual adoption of a total ban on land-mines, and that detectable mines and self-destructing mines were preferable from a humanitarian standpoint, negotiations stalled around

definitions of "detectability" and "self-destructing" mechanisms and the amount of time that States parties should be allowed to bring their mine stocks into line with the new specifications.

Yesterday, Mr. Molander noted with regret that during the three weeks of the Conference, 243 more people had been wounded and 36 killed by land-mines in Cambodia alone. In a closing press conference this afternoon at the Vienna International Centre, he drew attention to the important role played by non-governmental organizations in pressuring governments to move ahead on land-mine restrictions and to the media, which had "satanized" this type of weapon in extensive coverage of the Conference and the whole land-mine crisis.

The resumed session of the Review Conference is to meet in two stages. The first, to be held at Geneva from 15 to 19 January 1996, will deal with the Protocol's definitions, technical specifications and specific prohibitions of types of mines and potential circumstances for their use (articles 2 to 6 and the technical annex). The second stage, to be held at Geneva from 22 April to 3 May, will deal with all other issues, including scope, implementation mechanisms and technical cooperation, with a view to adopting a complete text. Also at the latter session, the Conference will seek to complete work begun on a declaration of principles.

The Convention -- whose full title is the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious or to Have Indiscriminate Effects -- was concluded in 1980 and came into effect on 2 December 1983. In addition to the Protocols on land-mines and lasers (Protocols II and IV, respectively), it has one on non-detectable fragments (Protocol I) and one on incendiary weapons (Protocol III). The Convention has 49 States parties. Four additional States -- Brazil, Malta, Romania and South Africa -- have ratified the Convention, but are subject to a six-month waiting period before it enters into force for them.

Land-Mines Negotiations

At the onset of negotiations on the land-mines Protocol, it seemed as though the most sensitive and polarized issues were political ones having to do with State sovereignty. These included the scope of the Protocol -- whether it would apply only to international armed conflicts or extend to internal conflicts, or be applicable "in all circumstances" -- issues which were the subject of extensive consultations chaired by the Conference President.

Another such issue was the choice of "implementation procedures" or "verification mechanisms" -- such as reporting requirements or fact-finding missions -- to confirm State parties' compliance with the Protocol.

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In the end, consensus foundered on definitions and technical requirements, as various States parties sought loopholes that would allow them to continue using technologies that they themselves produced or possessed in great numbers. Military defence and economic concerns were raised by several States.

The Conference's Main Committee II and its working groups on legal and technical matters were charged with the revision of Protocol II. It based its work on a draft, known as "the Chairman's rolling text" prepared by the expert group which had served as the Conference's Preparatory Committee under the chairmanship of Mr. Molander.

Some 48 amendments to the "rolling text" were submitted in the course of the Conference. On 11 October, with only two days of the Conference remaining, the President sought to meld those proposals into a new "Chairman's text", and then to hammer out a consensus in a group known as the "Friends of the Chairman".

By midday on 12 October, draft proposals emerging from the "Friends" showed little dissension on scope provisions; a formula had been found which emulated the Geneva Conventions' references to international and non-international armed conflicts, excluding civil disturbances that could not be classified as armed conflicts. The only implementation measure envisaged at that stage would be an annual conference of States parties which could review the status of adherence to the Protocol and receive States parties' reports on steps taken in support of the Protocol's provisions.

On the previously controversial question of transfers, participants were close to agreement on the need not to transfer any mines of types that were prohibited by the Protocol and to "exercise restraint" in transferring any mines to States that were not bound by the Protocol.

The Netherlands was seeking reinsertion in the Chairman's text of a ban on "anti-handling" devices -- mechanisms attached to mines which cause them to explode if disturbed, including when being hand-cleared. Humanitarian agencies represented in Conference negotiating bodies (the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and United Nations Department of Humanitarian Affairs) had vigorously urged for such a ban, citing the high level of casualties the devices inflicted on humanitarian deminers and subsistence farmers.

There were still some differences having to do with the nature and extent of technical cooperation and assistance obligations to be imposed on States parties but, according to the President, these were "not grave".

The gaps which proved "unbridgeable", according to the President, on the next-to-last day of the Conference had to do with specifications for the use

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of detectable and self-destructing mines, and the length of time States parties would be allowed to bring their practices into line with those provisions.

The Chairman's text would forbid the use of anti-personnel mines that were not detectable, with detectability defined as having a metal content of at least eight grams, or eliciting the same response from mine-detection equipment as an eight-gram metal mass. It would have allowed a grace period of up to eight years for States parties to defer compliance with the detectability clause, on the understanding that they would, "to the extent feasible, minimize" the use of non-detectable mines in the interim.

The Chairman's text would also provide that remotely delivered anti-personnel mines must have a 95-per-cent reliable self-destruction mechanism that would explode the mine within 30 days, with a 99.9-per-cent effective backup self-deactivation feature designed to render the mine unexplodable after 200 days if the self-destruction mechanism were to fail. Other types of land-mines, if remotely delivered, would either have to be self-destructing as defined above, or else have a 95.5-per-cent effective self-neutralizing mechanism, backed by the same 200-day self-deactivation feature. [A self-destructing mechanism explodes a mine after a certain period; a self-neutralizing mechanism "turns it off" without exploding; and a self-deactivating mechanism "irreversibly exhausts" a key component (as when a battery runs down).]

Also by that text, anti-personnel mines that were not remotely delivered would have to be self-destructing in accordance with the above definition unless they were placed in a fenced, guarded area with standardized warning signs.

Proposals in the "Friends" group which diverged significantly from the Chairman's text, and for which compromise formulas were not found, included the following:

-- a proposal by India that States parties "undertake to meet the detectability provisions as soon as feasible";

-- a proposal by China that would have the prohibition on non-detectable mines apply only to anti-personnel mines without self-destructing mechanisms;

-- a Russian Federation proposal that would call for remotely-delivered anti-personnel mines to be 90-per-cent effective in self-destructing within 30 days, with "an effective deactivating element" (no time-frame specified);

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-- a further Russian proposal for non-remotely-delivered anti-personnel mines that are not contained in fenced, marked areas to have a 90-per-cent effective self-destructing or self- neutralizing mechanism; and

-- a final Russian proposal that would allow States parties to defer compliance with the self-destructing/self-neutralizing requirements for up to 15 years.

The revised rolling text and other proposals will remain the basis for continued discussions on land-mine issues when the Review Conference holds its two follow-up sessions in Geneva next year.

Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons

Agreement on the text of a new, fourth Protocol banning the use and transfer of blinding laser weapons was reached in Main Committee III, which was assigned to deal with proposals for new protocols. The language adopted, which represents a delicate balance among a spectrum of positions on the details and extent of a ban on such weapons, was achieved in the Committee on 6 October in place of a more far-reaching draft submitted by Mr. Molander as Chairman of the preparatory body.

The new Protocol prohibits the use of any laser weapon against the naked eye, or the eye with corrective glasses, which has blinding as one of its combat functions. It also prohibits the transfer of such weapons to any State or non-State entity. It enjoins State parties using laser weapons to take "all feasible precautions to avoid the incidence of blindness, including training of their armed forces and other practical measures".

Several delegations, including Austria, France, Iran, the Netherlands and Sweden, expressed a mixture of satisfaction with the Protocol and reservations that it was not comprehensive enough. Those subscribing to that point of view had expressed the desire to include all blinding laser weapons in a ban, including those used against optical equipment. As adopted, the Protocol bans only lasers which cause blindness to "unenhanced vision", that is to the naked eye or to the eye with corrective eyesight devices.

The basis of the exclusion was clarified in a paper submitted by the Netherlands which grouped military laser weapons into three categories. Two of those groups were not considered to be directed against personnel. Laser weapons used for targeting and range-finding, such as those used in "smart bombs", were described as having a humane value due to their high degree of accuracy and associated capability of avoiding damage deemed militarily unnecessary.

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Anti-matériel lasers, used to destroy or damage electro-optical devices such as tank periscopes, were also described as targeting equipment, but with an anti-personnel component in that they blind persons looking directly into the optical device. By inserting the term "unenhanced vision" after the word blindness, the paper suggested that "any doubts as to the legitimacy of the use of anti-optics lasers" would be removed. The United States had indicated that while it would negotiate a prohibition on laser weapons, such an exclusion would have to be maintained. As adopted today, the fourth Protocol does not cover blinding as "an incidental or collateral effect of the legitimate military employment of laser systems, including laser systems used against optical equipment".

Permanent blindness is defined as the "irreversible and uncorrectable loss of vision which is seriously disabling with no prospect of recovery. Serious disability is equivalent to visual acuity of less than 20/200 Snellen measured using both eyes". Those who believed the ban was not comprehensive enough had also argued against a definition of blindness which used measurements, believing it to be too narrow.

Entry into force of the new Protocol will be six months after the twentieth State has become party to it.

Review of Convention

In Main Committee I, which was charged with reviewing ideas for strengthening the overall Convention, delegates failed to agree on proposals concerning a statement on common intention eventually to eliminate land-mines, on the establishment of a periodic five-year review of the Convention and on stricter definitions of "indiscriminate" use of certain weapons and "excessive injury". Also rejected was a proposal to include in a final declaration an expression of "satisfaction" at the unilateral efforts of some countries to ban the production, stockpiling, use and transfer of mines, as had been recently announced and undertaken by France and Belgium.

Views varied so widely that it was agreed to make no changes at all to the Convention itself. All declarations and amendments were to be left to a final declaration which would have included a "solemn declaration" of concerns and commitments. While such a document would carry international moral and political weight, it would have no legal implications. Nevertheless, there was enough objection to a paragraph which expressed "the wish of the Conference to achieve a universal and verifiable convention on weapons which may be deemed to cause unnecessary suffering or to have indiscriminate effects", that the entire paragraph was struck. Similarly rejected were attempts to reaffirm that materials and methods of warfare with certain indiscriminate effects or which caused unnecessary suffering were against international law.

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When it became clear that the Conference would end with a decision to continue negotiations on the land-mines Protocol, it was decided to resume deliberations on the issues raised in Main Committee I at that time. For that reason, work on a draft final declaration was suspended.

Closing statements

YZES SANDOZ of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a certain "glumness" had set in at the Review Conference because no tangible results had been attained, but that such a "provisional failure" was better than the hasty adoption of an unfinished text. That notwithstanding, the adoption of a new Protocol against blinding laser weapons was a success of the Conference and a historic development in that it was the first time humanity would be protected against a weapon that had yet to be fully developed and implemented.

ALAN COOK (New Zealand) said developments at the Conference had confirmed the importance of establishing a regular review process for the Convention, and of strengthening the current wording in the draft declaration prepared by Main Committee I. His Government would continue to participate actively in efforts to produce a strengthened Protocol II.

RICHARD STARR (Australia) said that while he applauded the new blinding laser weapons Protocol, he was deeply concerned at the remaining humanitarian crisis created by the continued existence of land-mines. Other conventions had been able to balance humanitarian and military concerns, but it seemed the Review Conference had not yet given enough weight to the humanitarian aspects involved. Some gains had been made, including tentative agreement to a five-year review process, expanding the scope of the Protocols to non-international armed conflicts and restrictions on transfers. He appealed to countries to build on those gains in Geneva.

ARUNDHATI GHOSE (India) regretted that none of her delegation's proposals for bans -- on the use of anti-personnel mines in internal conflicts, on remotely-delivered mines, and on transfers of mines -- had found acceptance. She felt there had been adequate agreement on all but 5 per cent of the Chairman's text for Protocol II and regretted the decision to suspend. She said that commercial interests had played too large a role and that delegations had relied on having negotiations taking place in closed meetings to protect them from public scrutiny. India was willing to meet "wherever and whenever" to move ahead on the Protocol, but would approach the next session cautiously in the light of this session's experience.

LI CHANGHE (China) applauded the adoption of the laser weapons Protocol. On land-mines, he said all sides had gained a deeper and fuller understanding of one another's positions. China had made maximum efforts to compromise.

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The inability to reach agreement at this Conference was due not to lack of time, but rather the complexity of the issues being debated among parties with broadly differing security interests and levels of development.

CARL VAN ESSEN of Save the Children, speaking for the International Campaign to Ban Land-Mines, said the member organizations of the Campaign were disappointed. During the three weeks of the Conference, some 1,500 civilians, adults and children, had been killed or maimed by land-mines. The only answer was a total ban on production, use and transfer of mines. Tinkering with such issues as self-destruction and failure rates would not solve the problem; there was no technical solution to the humanitarian crisis. The Campaign's efforts from now on would include "blacklisting" of all companies producing mines, whether "dumb" or "smart".

Non-Governmental Organizations

Some 114 individuals from 76 non-governmental organizations throughout the world took part in the Review Conference and related activities at the Conference site and elsewhere in Vienna. Twenty-six representatives of non-governmental organizations addressed the Review Conference on 28 September, nearly all advocating a total ban on anti-personnel land-mines.

Delegates from Austria, Cambodia, India, Sweden and the United States held information-exchange sessions with non-governmental participants. Petitions signed by 1.7 million people in 53 countries were presented to the Review Conference on 27 September by mine victims from Afghanistan, Cambodia, Mozambique and the United States. Conference President Mr. Molander (Sweden) received the two-metre pile of petitions on behalf of the States parties. In addition to running short videotapes on land-mine concerns, shown on monitors outside the meeting rooms, the International Campaign to Ban Land-Mines sponsored two showings of an hour-long video documentary on the land-mine crisis in Cambodia, entitled "Silent Sentinels: Cowards' War".

Other awareness-raising activities held in Vienna by non-governmental groups included the placement of a simulated minefield on a public street, a gallery exhibition of photographs and special religious services. Several organizations, including UNICEF, delivered six tons of shoes to the Austrian parliament as a reminder of the large number of people throughout the world who lose their legs to land-mines.

Officers

The President of the Conference was Johan Molander (Sweden). The 10 Vice-Presidents were Werner Ehrlich (Austria), Li Changhe (China), André Lewin (France), Arundhati Ghose (India), Antonio de Icaza (Mexico), A.V. Zmeevski (Russian Federation), Daniela Rozgonová (Slovakia), Mohamed Fadhel Khalil (Tunisia), Volodymyr Belashov (Ukraine), Michael J. Matheson (United States).

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Main Committee I was chaired by Tibor Toth (Hungary); Main Committee II by Jorge Morales (Cuba); Main Committee III by Wolfgang Hoffman (Germany); the Drafting Committee by Mark J. Moher (Canada); and the Credentials Committee by Zdzislaw Galicki (Poland).

Participation

The Review Conference was attended by representatives of the following States parties: Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay.

Representatives of the following countries took part as observers: Albania, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, Cambodia, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gabon, Holy See, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Luxembourg, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Oman, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Republic of Tanzania, Venezuela and Viet Nam.

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