Subject: From TRANSNATIONAL - Satyagraha - 4 July 1994 - No. 5
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Fortnightly Newsletter of the Radical Party
ITALY: BAN THE PRODUCTION AND EXPORTATION OF ANTI-PERSON MINES
We are publishing the text of one of the interpellations addressed to
Italian Foreign Minister, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Industry and
Commerce.
Faced with the various parliamentary initiatives that have been undertaken
in recent weeks, the Italian Government, in the person of Minister of
Defence Previti, has declared that no more anti-person mines will be
produced or exported by Italy.
INTERPELLATION TO THE FOREIGN MINISTER, THE MINISTER OF DEFENCE AND THE
MINISTER OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE
Considering that:
- anti-person mines, because of their widespread diffusion in the
world, can cumulatively be defined as a weapon of mass destruction.
Reliable research sources estimate that there are from 85 to 100 million
scattered throughout 60 countries. Like other weapons of this kind -
nuclear, chemical, bacteriological - these mines indiscrimately kill
soldiers, children, peasants, and pregnant women; and they kill or maim
many more civilians than servicemen, not only during conflicts but
indefinitely, remaining active, ready to explode, after hostilities have
ceased;
- this situation has been created both by the wide availability of
production technology (at least 48 countries manufacture anti-person mines)
and the extremely low cost of these explosive devices (up to three US
dollars each). These two conditions have caused a vast quantity of
anti-person mines to become available not only to the regular armies of
States, but also to movements participating in civil wars and to factions
and clans engaged in armed conflict. In such cases mines have been
planted, and are still being planted at random, according to the tactical
needs of the moment, without anyone bothering to document the sites and the
distribution of the explosive devices to facilitate an eventual
mine-clearing;
- mine-clearing becomes a real nightmare, particularly in the above
cases, when hundreds of square kilometres have to be searched metre by
metre. The result is that between 300 and 1000 US dollars have to be spent
to remove a mine that is only worth a few thousand lire. For this reason
in Cambodia, where there are between 4 and 7 million unexploded mines to 9
million persons, removing a mine costs from one to four times as much as
the average annual per capita income. Merely to remove the mines left by
the Iraqis, Kuwait had to spend 800 million US dollars and sacrifice 84
lives - almost as many as the number of American dead during the Gulf War.
The land rendered uncultivable by the planting of mines in Angola will
cost the world 32 million US dollars in food aid. The civil war in
Mozambique has rendered all the principal overland routes unfit for use,
making it necessary to have recourse to air transport wherever possible -
which cost 25 times as much per ton of cargo;
- the effects on health are quite dramatic. Anti-person mines,
especially those filled with shrapnel, cause terrible wounds that are
difficult to tend. They go gangrenous and require multiple operations and
amputations, which overburden health systems that are virtually always
rudimentary: it is estimated that the medical resources absorbed by each
mine victim makes him or her indirectly responsible for one more death in
the poorest countries. It does not take much to understand what living as
a disabled person means in an agricultural economy where artificial limbs
are a luxury that no one can afford. Today, one person out of 236, 470,
1000 and 2,500 in Cambodia, Angola, the north of Somalia, and Vietnam
respectively, has been disabled by a mine explosion
- the international community is beginning to adopt countermeasures.
On 16 December 1993 the U.N. General Assembly unanimously approved a
non-binding Resolution in favour of a general ban on the exportation of
mines. In 1992 the U.S. Congress had already approved, on the initiative
of Senator Patrick Leahy, a unilateral moratorium of one year on the
exportation of American mines. At the end of 1993, President Clinton
extended this moratorium for another three years, and appealed to other
producer countries to follow suit. Various countries, including France,
Germany, Greece and South Africa, took up the American initiative;
- Italy, on the other hand, has not carried out such a responsible
action. This is all the more serious and worrying for the simple fact that
Italy is one of the major world manufacturers of anti-person mines.
According to an official government report Italy exported 30,000
anti-person mines to the value of 264 million lire to an unidentified
country last year. In addition, it should be noted that both Greece and
South Africa manufacture mines under Italian licence;
- moreover, Italy has never ratified the Convention on Inhuman Weapons
of 1981, which it did however sign. Said Convention includes a protocol on
land mines that bans their use against civilians. It should be noted that
the debate regarding the viability of strengthening this Convention is
still very much alive, especially in the U.S.; in fact, the Clinton
Administration proposes banning the manufacture of all mines that do not
contain devices for their easy location and automatic destruction, while
Senator Leahy is in favor of a total ban on the manufacture of anti-person
mines and is attempting, in the meantime, to have a one-year moratorium on
the American manufacture of these mines passed by Congress;
- in order to decide what position our country should, and ought to take,
it must be pointed out that in spite of being one of the world's leading
manufacturers of anti-person mines as stated above, Italy does not have a
particularly important economic interest in the sector, either quantatively
or qualitatively speaking. According to official government figures, Italy
exported mines worth 300 million lire in 1990, 18.7 billion lire in 1991,
13.8 billion lire in 1992, and 1.8 billion lire in 1993. Data prepared by
Giuseppe Catalano and Francesco Terrieri of the IRES (Institute of Economic
and Social Research) in Tuscany reveals that in 1992 the people employed in
this sector, which also includes anti-tank and sea mines, were
approximately 150 in four industrial concerns (BPD, Tecnovar, Valsella and
Whitehead) with a turnover of about 20 billion lire. An economy like the
Italian one, with 25 million employed who yielded one million and a half
billion lire in the same year of 1992, can permit itself to partially or
totally convert men and equipment presently devoted to the manufacture of
mines;
considering all of the foregoing, the interpellants would like to know:
1) if the Government intends to accept President Clinton's invitation by
promoting and imposing a similar moratorium on the exportation of mines in
Italy;
2) if the Government intends to submit to Parliament a bill for the
ratification of the Convention on Inhuman Weapons and to solicit its urgent
approval, possibly with restrictive amendments;
3) if the Government intends to undertake initiatives, and if so which, in
a broader sense, in order that Italy - by acting unilaterally and taking
suitable action with international institutions - can assume a major role
in eliminating rather than aggravating the scourge known as the diffusion
and use of anti-person mines.
