§ Baroness Serotaasked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their policy on the import, export, transfer, manufacture and use of anti-personnel landmines.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean)As announced earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, we shall implement our manifesto commitment to ban the import, export, transfer and manufacture of all forms of anti-personnel landmines.
We will accelerate the phasing out of our stocks of anti-personnel landmines, 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 only be suspended 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 landmines. 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.