US landmine experts in Lebanon
Lebanon, Military, 10/10/1997

In another sign of improving relations, the United States has dispatched land mine experts to Lebanon to study the possibility of helping the Lebanese army remove landmines and other deadly ordnance left over by the civil war.

The experts, Karl Olson of the State Department's humanitarian de-mining team and an unidentified aide from the Defense Department, arrived here last week and have already made some on-site inspections in Mount Lebanon and other areas which were once the scenes of heavy fighting between Lebanese rival factions. Sources said the trip is the last phase before Washington formally announces the inclusion of Lebanon in the four-year-old campaign to clear out land mines currently underway in 14 countries.

Once Lebanon is formally accepted into the program, Washington will send equipment and experts to help the Lebanese government set up a Mine Action Center, the cornerstone of the campaign.

Olson told reporters during a visit to a landmine site that the Lebanese army needs modern landmine-detecting equipment, training and other technical assistance to help it accomplish the task of clearing many areas of land mines.

The Lebanese army says it has identified 648 minefields across the country, and has cleared 207 of them. Each field surveyed so far has between 50 and 60 mines, although the army still has no statistics from the south and large parts of the western Bekaa.

At the end of the 1975-90 civil war, the army cleared the mines from the old Green Line separating east Beirut from west Beirut. It also cleared the mines in the downtown commercial district in 1994.

Landmines, however, continue to be used on daily basis in the ongoing war of attrition in the South between Israeli troops and Hezbollah guerrillas. The guerrillas are fighting to oust 1,500 Israeli troops and affiliated militia units from the buffer zone Israel has occupied since 1985.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Richard Jones told reporters Wednesday that his government would be supplying the Lebanese army with equipment to remove landmines, along with a training program which will be run by U.S. army personnel.

"We are helping creating an indigenous capability in Lebanon to remove mines. Most of the mines outside the occupied area were not planted by the Israelis but date back to the war years and were planted by Lebanese to protect their villages," he explained.

"We do not look at this as something related to the conflict in the South but rather related to helping Lebanon recover from the war years," Jones added.

The U.S. administration on July 30 lifted a decade-old ban on American travel to Lebanon, thus paving the way for improved relations and joint projects between the two countries.

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