Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-07-07-Speech-4-127"
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"en.20050707.22.4-127"2
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"Mr President, I was unable to support the conclusions of the resolution on landmines, although, as someone who has been involved in development cooperation, I share this concern and I regard the use of landmines in developing countries as a great tragedy.
I represent an EU country that is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the Ottawa Treaty by the year 2016. By that time we will have scrapped the world’s safest and least destructive mines, which protect our 1 324 kilometre long border with Russia. The mines have not just been left in the ground unsupervised: they are in storage and guarded. When they were placed in the ground during the war, precise maps were produced so that they could be deactivated later on. No civilian can tread on a Finnish mine or accidentally step on the tripwire of a deactivated mine. Images of children with mutilated limbs do not apply to conditions in Finland. Countries where that happens cannot be part of the Ottawa Treaty. We already know that our defences are weakening substantially. We will have to find a substitute system with the same function but a different name. Our problem is therefore one of semantics.
One might ask what logistic strategy adheres to a set of morals that insists on the destruction of the present antipersonnel mines but agrees that some replacement system should be acquired. The purpose of warding off and destroying the enemy does not alter the fact that this weapon system is to be exchanged for something more modern, more expensive and more effective. The new systems are not in any way less lethal instruments of death than the current land mines. Their purpose is to prevent the enemy’s advance. In resolving the problem we should focus more on the use of mines as instruments of terror than the equipment itself."@en1
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