The European Commission has approved projects worth 1.85 MECU to clean up Cambodian agricultural land sown with landmines. The grant, channelled via the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), will enable a specialized NGO, Handicap International (Belgium), to clear farmland in the Phnom Voar region of Kampot over a period of six months.

Landmines kill or maim about 300 people a month. De-mining is a crucial part of reintegrating people alienated by such a long-running conflict. The Phnom Voar region is particularly dangerous as it was long a bastion of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas. They mined it to ward off attacks from government forces, which finally took the land in 1994.

Resuming development in the country is seen as impossible without a clean-up. Because these mines are claiming so many lives, ECHO views this operation as 'humanitarian de-mining'. Handicap International will be working with an official Cambodian organisation, the Cambodian Mine Action Centre.

Negotiators from 60 countries met in Geneva in mid-January to agree worldwide curbs on landmines. The United Nationssponsored talks were intended to pave the way for a meeting in April that will revise a UN convention on weapons seen as widely inhumane because of the civilian casualties they cause. The UN estimates that more than 100 million mines have been planted in 64 countries, causing an estimated 20,000 deaths and serious injuries to civilians every year.