§ Mrs. Helen JacksonTo ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the policy of Her Majesty's Government on the import, export, transfer, manufacture and use of anti-personnel land mines. [1067]
§ Mr. Robin CookAs announced earlier today by my right hon. Friend we shall implement our manifesto commitment to ban the import, export, transfer and manufacture of all forms of anti-personnel land mines.
We will accelerate the phasing out of our stocks of anti-personnel land mines, and complete it by 2005 or when an effective international agreement to ban their use enters into force, whichever comes first. In the meantime, we have introduced a complete moratorium on their operational use, while we participate constructively in the Ottawa Process and push in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva for a wider ban.
That moratorium will be suspended only if we judge that for a specific operation the security of our Armed Forces would be jeopardised without the possibility of the use of anti-personnel land mines. In such an exceptional case we would report to Parliament the decision, and the circumstances which led to it.
We shall also examine how we can make more progress in removing mines already laid across the world.