WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided not to sign an international convention banning land mines.
State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Tuesday that the administration recently completed a review and decided not to change the Bush-era policy.
More than 150 countries have agreed to the Mine Ban Treaty’s provisions to end the production, use, stockpiling and trade in mines. Besides the United States, holdouts include China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Russia.
A report this month by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines found that mines remain planted in the earth in more than 70 countries and killed at least 1,266 people and wounded 3,891 last year. More than 2.2 million anti-personnel mines, 250,000 anti-vehicle mines and 17 million other explosives left over from wars have been removed since 1999, the report said.
Ohio: School buses collide
Two school buses have collided at a red light Tuesday in Lebanon, sending 17 eighth-grade students to several Ohio hospitals. The school superintendent said most of the injured students have shoulder and neck pain. Paramedics responding to the accident immobilized two girls using a back brace and neck brace.
Britain: War inquiry begins
An inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq war kicked off Tuesday with top government advisers testifying that some Bush administration officials were calling for Saddam Hussein’s ouster as early as 2001, long before sanctions were exhausted and two years before the U.S.-led invasion. Critics hope the hearings, which will call ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair and are billed as the most sweeping inquiry into the conflict, will expose alleged deception in the buildup to fighting. However, they won’t establish criminal or civil liability. The panel will seek evidence but not testimony from ex-White House staff. Blair will be questioned on whether he secretly backed President George W. Bush plan’s for invasion a year before Parliament authorized military involvement in 2003.
Austria: Iran resolution ready
Six world powers have readied a resolution critical of Iran’s nuclear program, diplomats in Vienna said Tuesday, as Tehran suggested it was still ready to discuss a U.N.-backed plan meant to delay the Islamic Republic’s ability to make a nuclear weapon. Under the plan, Iran would export its uranium for enrichment in Russia and France, where it would be converted into fuel rods to be returned to Iran about a year later. Iran now has enough enriched material to make one or two nuclear warheads, even though it insists it is interested only in generating power through enrichment. The six countries are the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
New Zealand: Icebergs from Antarctica approaching
A flotilla of hundreds of icebergs that split off Antarctic ice shelves is drifting toward New Zealand and could pose a risk to ships in the south Pacific Ocean, officials said Tuesday. The nearest one, measuring about 30 yards tall, was 160 miles southeast of New Zealand’s Stewart Island, Australian glaciologist Neal Young said. He couldn’t say how many icebergs in total were roaming the Pacific, but he counted 130 in one satellite image alone and 100 in another. Icebergs are routinely sloughed off as part of the natural development of ice shelves, but Young said the rate appeared to be increasing as a result of regional warming in Antarctica.
From Herald news services
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