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Britain to join

worldwide drive

against landmines

LONDON: Britain announced a policy U-turn on anti-personnel mines on Tuesday, saying it would start destroying its stockpile immediately and join an international campaign for them to be banned.

"We will now campaign towards a total worldwide ban on anti-personnel mines. There is no holding back on that. We will be campaigning very strongly. But understand -- it will be very difficult to achieve," junior Foreign Office minister David Davis told BBC radio.

Davis said Britain would destroy almost half of its stockpile of mines immediately and give up the remaining mines once an international ban had been agreed.

The campaign for a ban on anti-personnel mines gained momentum last week when Australia and Germany announced their support.

Twenty-eight states now back a ban on the use of landmines. According to U.N. figures, there are an estimated 100 million landmines around the world and 25,000 people are killed or maimed by mines every year.

Britain has not produced or exported mines since the early 1980s but it has tens of thousands in stock and the military has argued until now that in some cases they did have a useful defensive role to play.

Davis's announcement coincides with a meeting in Geneva to review a 1980 agreement on landmine use. The talks are expected to tighten curbs on certain types of mine, but an outright ban is not even be on the agenda.

Sir David Puttnam, who produced the film "The Killing Fields" about Cambodia, was among a group of anti-mine campaigners who handed in a 180,000-name petition at Prime Minister John Major's office on Monday.-Reuter