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US landmine offer to Ukraine throws treaty into 'crisis': campaign group
A US offer to give Ukraine anti-personnel mines to help battle Russia's invasion has thrown a landmark global anti-landmine treaty into "crisis", campaigners said Friday, urging Kyiv to snub the proposal.
Ukraine is one of 164 signatories to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of landmines.
The United States, which is not, said last week it would transfer landmines to Ukraine, prompting condemnation from rights groups.
The offer has thrown the treaty into "crisis", Tamar Gabelnick, director of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), told a meeting of signatories in Cambodia's Siem Reap.
"We therefore hope very much that the mines offered by the US will be firmly rejected by Ukraine," she said.
The ICBL later said the conference had been "overshadowed" by the US annoncement of the landmines offer.
"We have heard some concerns raised by the community," Ukraine defence official Yevhenii Kivshyk told the conference on Friday.
"They will be conveyed to the government of Ukraine."
Ukraine's delegation in Siem Reap has refused multiple requests by AFP journalists for comment on the landmine offer.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called the mines "very important" to halting Russian attacks.
On Thursday, an official from Finland's defence ministry said it was contemplating if anti-personnel landmines should be brought back into its arsenal.
Finland abandoned the weapon in 2012 when it joined the anti-mine treaty but advocates for their use argue the country's security environment has changed due to Russia's war in Ukraine.
Finland dropped decades of military non-alignment and became a NATO member last year.
That move angered its eastern neighbour Russia, with which it shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border -- the longest in the US-led defence alliance.
The Siem Reap conference is a five-yearly meeting held by signatories to the anti-landmine treaty to assess progress in its objective towards a world without antipersonnel mines.
On Tuesday, landmine victims from across the world gathered at the meeting to protest Washington's decision to supply Ukraine with landmines.
More than 100 demonstrators lined the walkway to the conference venue.
O. Karlsson--BTZ
