SIGNATORIES TO MINE BAN TREATY TO RAISE MONEY FOR MINE REMOVAL

( Editorial: --> 6107 ) OTTAWA, Dec 5 (Hina) - A convention on a ban on anti-personnel landmines worldwide has been signed by 121 countries, including Croatia. A three-day conference to sign the treaty ended in Ottawa on Thursday evening. The convention commits countries not to produce, use and stockpile landmines and it obliges countries to destroy the reserves of those mines within four year and to remove planted mines within ten years. It will take effect after at least forty (40) countries ratify the document. However, the big world power -the United States, Russia and China- have not signed the Ottawa document. At the end of the conference, Canada's Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy said that a large number of countries announced to ensure a about 500 million dollars for programmes of mine removal and victims' rehabilitation. The head of the Croatian delegation at the conference, Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sanader, held talks with Jody Williams, the coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which won this year's Nobel Peace Prize. The International Campaign to Ban Landmines, organised in 1992 by a group of humanitarian activists from several countries to attract international support for the mine ban, is gathering more than 1,000 associations and organisations worldwide at the present. Sanader and Williams considered possibilities of cooperation in projects for the removal of mines in Croatia, where about three million mines remained planted after the Serbian aggression. They also talked about her visit to Croatia in early 1998. Sanader met his Canadian counterpart Donald Campbell as well. Canada pledged at the conference to set up a fund of a hundred million Canadian dollars for the implementation of the convention. The Croatian official held talks with a Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, on the reintegration of the Danube river area, the course of which Russia supported. (hina) jn mš 051203 MET dec 97