The heads of the three party groups in the Finnish government have set 2016 as the year when Finland would give up its infantry land mines. This means that Finland would keep its land mines considerably longer than in a recent proposal put forward by a team of civil servants.
The plan, put together by Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (Centre), Finance Minister Antti Kalliomäki (SDP), and Environment Minister Jan-Erik Enestam (Swed. People’s Party), calls for Finland to become a signatory of the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of anti-personnel land mines, in 2012. After that Finland would have four years to destroy its stocks of land mines.
In the coming nine years the Finnish Defence Forces would acquire the new weapons systems that would replace the land mines. The replacement would cost EUR 300 million, of which 200 million would comprise extra funding, and the remaining 100 million would be squeezed out of the normal military budget.
In the civil servants’ group the Ministry of Defence had proposed joining the Ottawa Treaty in 2012 and decommissioning the mines by the end of the same year. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs proposed joining the treaty in 2008 and eliminating the mines by 2012.
The issue will be discussed further next week at a meeting of the government’s committee on foreign and security policy, which is working on the government’s upcoming defence policy report.
