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Country Reports
SLOVENIA, Landmine Monitor Report 1999

SLOVENIA

Mine Ban Policy

Slovenia signed the Mine Ban Treaty on 3 December 1997 and ratified it on 27 October 1998. Slovenia took part in all of the Ottawa Process treaty preparatory meetings, endorsed the pro-treaty Brussels Declaration in June 1997, and was a full participant in the treaty negotiations in Oslo in September. It also voted in favor of United Nations General Assembly resolutions supporting a ban on landmines in 1996, 1997, and 1998. State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mr. Ivo Vaigl attended the Regional Conference on Landmines in Budapest, Hungary on 26-28 March 1998. Slovenia is a state party to the Convention on Conventional Weapons, but has not ratified the 1996 amended Protocol II on mines.

Production, Transfer, and Stockpiling

Slovenia is not known to have produced or exported antipersonnel mines in the past. Speaking at the Budapest Regional Conference, Mr. Vaigl stated that as of 5 November 1996, Slovenia committed never to produce, transfer, stockpile, or use antipersonnel mines.[1] According to Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Slovenia has a stockpile of approximately 145,000 antipersonnel mines. Slovenia is expected to approve a stockpile destruction plan in 1999, with all APMS, except for some 7,000 retained for training, destroyed by April 2003.[2]

Mine Action

The government of Slovenia has reported a problem with landmines remaining from both World Wars and the brief war of independence in 1991, during which the Yugoslav army laid mines near military targets and in other areas of Slovenia. Many of these mines and other unexploded ordnance were removed in 1992, but the number remaining is unclear.[3]

Slovenia’s delegate at the Mine Ban Treaty signing ceremony said that “Slovenia considers the regional approach as the most effective way of its engagement” with humanitarian mine action.[4] As such, Slovenia has concentrated its landmine-related humanitarian efforts on neighboring Bosnia-Herzegovina, to which it donated 200 million Tolars for mine victim assistance in 1995.[5] Slovenia has been seeking international funding for an international trust fund for demining and mine victim assistance in Bosnia.[6] In January 1999, the governments of Slovenia and the Czech Republic signed a declaration of cooperation in support of this fund,[7] which has been named the International Trust Fund of the Republic of Slovenia for Demining, Mine Clearance and Assistance to Mine Victims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is headquartered in Ljubljana.[8] Slovenia also has offered demining training through its Centre for Search and Rescue and assistance for mine victims through its Institute for Rehabilitation.[9]

<SLOVAKIA | SPAIN>

[1]International Campaign to Ban Landmines, “Report: Regional Conference on Landmines, Budapest, Hungary, 26-28 March 1998,” p. 26.

[2] Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s Mine Action Database.

[3]Country Profiles, United Nations Demining Database, http:www.un.org.Depts/Landmine/ (Ref. 3/1/99).

[4]Address of H.E. Dr. Boris Frlec, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Slovenia at the Signing Ceremony, Ottawa, 3 December 1997.

[5]United States Department of State, Hidden Killers, September 1998, p. C3.

[6] Ibid, p.C7.

[7]Czech News Agency report, 7 January 1999.

[8]Memorandum issued by Slovenian delegation to Ottawa conference, 3 December 1997.

[9]Address of H.E. Dr. Boris Frlec, Ottawa, 3 December 1997.