Growing calls for UK to withdraw from treaty banning landmines | Politics News

Calls are growing for the UK to withdraw from the treaty that prohibits the use of land mines.

Nations in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Finland, have indicated that they will leave the Ottawa Treaty in 1997 So they may lie mine amid an increasing threat from Russia and Belo -Rusland.

The British government remains committed to remaining part of the Ottawa treaty, but some want it to be abandoned or at least revised.

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In a debate in the House of Lords, several peers made the matter that the UK is more open to the use of land mines, including the Duke of Wellington, former soldiers and auxiliary workers and the grandson of Premier Clement Attlee.

Former defense secretary Sir Ben Wallace also called on the United Kingdom to withdraw from the Treaty.

Lord Robathan, who was an officer in the Coldstream guards and also in the SAS before becoming a conservative MP, remembered that a vehicle he was in was hit by a mine in Iraq.

He described the Ottawa treaty as “window cover” – and added that British soldiers “would have to have the defense to use land mines if the UK were to wage a war.

‘I saw British soldiers being mutilated in Afghanistan and Iraq in the recent past.

“This convention does nothing for them or for peace. It takes away one defensive line from our own soldiers,” he said.

Lord Robathan also spoke of his work that cleans up land mines.

The Duke of Wellington, a descendant of Arthur Wellesley who won the Battle of Waterloo, told the room how he was a curator of the Halo Trust who worked with Princess Diana on the exploitation.

But 25 years after the Ottawa treaty was signed, “the military situation changed unthinkingly,” the Duke said – and claimed that millions of mines were laid by Russia.

The Duke said he wanted changes to how the UK interpreted the treaty.

“I humbly suggest to the minister that the government is trying to preserve the principles of the Ottawa Convention, but try to change it to take into account the new technologies and the transformed military situation in Europe,” he said.

The Ottawa treaty also prevents the UK from producing, selling and transferring mines to other countries.

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Earl Attlee talked about his time running an NGO in Rwanda and saw the impact of mine there.

But he said that she is ‘lawyer’ to support a research article from the ideas of the policy asking Ottawa to be ‘hampered’, along with the treaty prohibiting groups.

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Among those who asked for the ban to stay in place were the anti-countrymin campfighter Lord Dubs, as well as the Lord Bishop of Southwark and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle.

Barons Chapman of Foreign Office Minister Darlington responded on behalf of the government.

She said the UK has now ‘involved’ with the nations withdrawn from the Ottawa treaty to understand their decisions.

The minister said: “The government still believes that we can promote both our own national security and those of our allies and the important humanitarian norms that protect civilians, which represent these treaties.

“Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fundamental change in the geopolitical context that has taken place, and I am grateful to all noble Lord for the asking of these questions.”