New U.S. Landmine Policy: Questions and Answers

What is new about this policy? The Bush Administration’s policy on landmines, announced February 27, 2004, reverses many of the positive steps the U.S. has made over the past decade to eradicate antipersonnel mines. The use of self-destructing mines is permitted indefinitely without any geographic restrictions. The use of long-lived antipersonnel mines is now permissible in Korea until 2010. The only apparent surviving element of previous landmine policy is the 1992 legislative ban on antipersonnel mine exports, in effect through 2008, which could not be overturned by Presidential directive.