ELSINORE, Denmark, July 4 (Reuter) - Defence specialists, aid agencies and government officials from 48 countries agreed on Thursday on new standards for humanitarian mine-clearing and host Denmark pledged $6 million to help world de-mining efforts.
Ending a three-day conference, Danish Development Aid Minister Poul Nielson said delegates had set international benchmarks for safe and effective civil mine-clearing and should have a final draft for the United Nations in October.
"Certainly this conference is a significant landmark toward progress in creating a mine-free world at long last," said U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Yasushi Akashi.
Apart from codifying technical procedures for locating, surveying and clearing minefields, the new guidelines lay down minimum standards for safety, operator training and medical support and call for establishment of national mine databases.
There are about 110 million active mines around the world and the United Nations says for every one cleared, 20 new devices are sown, killing and maiming civilians and causing hunger and economic disarray by making farmland unusable.
Humanitarian de-mining seeks to reclaim mine-contaminated land for agriculture and safe habitation and requires a greater degree of clearance than military mine-clearing, which often has as its goal only the opening of a path through a mined area.
In many cases the work is done using techniques which have changed little since World War Two, employing hand-held metal detectors and men with rods prodding the ground.
The conference at Elsinore, a coastal town north of Copenhagen immortalised by William Shakespeare as the site of Hamlet's castle, agreed that more technology must be harnessed in order to reduce the huge backlog of unexploded mines.
Among the most promising advances, some still in the development stage, were sensors to detect explosive vapours, infra-red beams that showed buried objects by detecting temperature differences and airborne ground-penetrating radar, delegates said.
The cost of such sophisticated equipment could be spread by an organisation such as the United Nations buying it and then leasing it out as needed, one conference paper suggested, although the increased speed and safety achieved could make new systems more cost-effective than slow and labour-intensive manual searches.
Pledging $6 million to the U.N.'s Department of Humanitarian Affairs and other agencies engaged in mine-clearing activities, Nielson said that parallel to practical efforts political pressure for a total ban on land mines must be maintained.
At an international conference in Geneva last May, 55 countries adopted new rules for the use of land mines but failed to agree on an ouright ban.
Denmark was among more than 30 countries demanding that land mines be outlawed. It has since declared a unilateral ban and pledged to destroy its own mine stocks.