His Excellency Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle
President
Palacio de la Moneda
Oficina de Presidente
Santiago
Chile

Your Excellency

New Zealanders welcome your country's stand on banning anti-personnel landmines and the comments made by your delegation when they signed the Ottawa Convention in Ottawa last December.

We noted that you were a signatory to the "Political Declaration of MERCOSUR, Bolvia and Chile as a Peace Zone" when it was signed in Ushuaia last month. We particularly welcome Paragraph 6 which states that the region will be free of anti-personnel and landmines and that you were "looking to extend it to the whole Western Hemisphere."

I was in your country last month and met residents from Arica who told me of the landmines in their region. I am sure they too will welcome the establishment of this Peace Zone.

At the forthcoming meeting of the Non Aligned Movement's Summit , to be held in Durban, South Africa from the 29 August to the 2 September 1998, the banning of landmines will be on the Agenda. Although the majority of the members of the NAM have signed the Ottawa Convention, their draft resolution was very weak. We seek your support to bring any resolution on landmines into line with the wording of the Ottawa Conference.

Please consider carefully articles 115 to 118 of the Communiqué of the Ministerial Meeting of the Coordinating bureau of the Non Aligned Movement issued in Car tagena de Indias, Colombia on 19-20 May 1998. Point 115 reads:

"115. The Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Heads of Delegation noted the opening for signature in Ottawa during December 1997 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their destruction. They emphasized that elimination of landmines should take into account the legitimate national security concern of States as well as their legitimate rights to use appropriate measures for self-defence."

We are disappointed by the restraint in this language. We hope that the Durban NAM Summit would move beyond "noting" to "welcoming" the Ottawa treaty, and that it would further call upon States in a position to do so to become states parties as soon as possible.

We are also extremely concerned about the last sentence in the Cartagena communiqué paragraph 115 which emphasizes "that elimination of landmines should take into account the legitimate national security concern of States as well as their legitimate rights to use appropriate measures for self defence". We strongly urge that this sentence be deleted from any text agreed in Durban, as we are concerned that the shift in emphasis of this sentence from "anti-personnel landmines" to "landmines" in general is ambiguous and misleading. If the word "landmines" does not include anti-personnel landmines that should be stated. If it can be interpreted so as to include APMs then it in fact is counter to both the letter and spirit of the Ottawa Convention and presents a grave contradiction for those 73 states of the NAM which have signed the Ottawa convention. We believe that the best way of dealing with this potential discrepancy would be to simply delete this and all references to national security.

As you know, as of 7 August, a total of 128 countries have signed the Convention and 31 have ratified. Out of the 113 NAM Member States 73 NAM members have signed the Convention and 13 NAM members have ratified it. Hence, the great majority of NAM members have indeed committed themselves to the Treaty, which any agreed-upon language should reflect.

So we seek your support and leadership to effect some very necessary changes in the draft Communiqué.

Yours sincerely
John V Head,
Spokesperson for the New Zealand Campaign Against Landmines