Group: Greece, Turkey failed to destroy mines

Greece, Turkey and Belarus have missed deadlines to destroy their land mine stockpiles, as required under an international treaty, said a report Friday by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Diplomats from the three countries declined to be interviewed about the report in Geneva, but it quoted their governments as acknowledging their deadlines have been missed. Greece, Turkey and Belarus should have destroyed a total of nearly 7.5 million of land mines by March.

The 1,155-page annual report by The International Campaign, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997, said Greece mentioned legal problems with contracting a company to carry out the destruction and the difficulty of finding environmentally safe destruction sites as reasons for the delay.

Turkey claimed preparations for getting rid of its stockpiles took longer than planned.

Belarus said it had been set back by delays in receiving support funds from the European Union. It said its remaining stockpile contains a type of mine that is more difficult and costly to destroy.

Globally, only half a million mines were destroyed over the past year, the report said. But it said Afghanistan, Burundi and Sudan got rid of all of their stockpiles.

This brings to more than 42 million the number of destroyed stockpiled mines since the treaty to ban land mines came into force in 1999, the report said. But 44 countries still have 176 million mines.

More than 1,400 people were killed and 3,900 wounded by land mine explosions worldwide in 2007, the report said, adding the number may be much higher because reporting is poor in many countries.

All of the 156 countries that have joined the treaty are given four years to destroy their stockpiles. Major users of land mines, including the U.S., Russia and China, have not signed the treaty.

Greece, Turkey and Belarus will not face sanctions for missing their deadlines, said Steve Goose, arms control director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, which helped produce the report.