Kuwait backs ban on mines

Kuwait's deputy prime minister and defense minister, Sheikh Salem al Sabah, reiterated on September 10 Kuwait's support of efforts to ban anti-personnel land mines, the Kuwait News Agency said.

Sabah, participating the international conference on banning anti-personnel land mines in Oslo, said that the Kuwaiti position springs from "bitter experience and human suffering we experienced after the liberation of Kuwait."

"Anti-personnel land mines are terrorist instruments in an undeclared war against humans and civilians", Sheikh Salem said.

Kuwait bore the brunt of millions of land mines planted at random by Iraqi forces during their seven-month invasion of Kuwait, which started on 2 August 1990.

Nearly 1,700 civilians in Kuwait were killed and an estimated 2,300 seriously wounded, 70 percent of whom were children, as a result of the mines laid by Iraqi occupation forces.

The state of Kuwait has sent a high-ranking delegation to the Oslo conference, which brings together around 100 countries.