Poland withdraws from treaty banning antipersonnel mines

Warsaw: Poland will use antipersonnel as well as anti-tank land mines to defend its eastern border against the growing threat from Russia, Poland’s deputy defence minister told The Associated Press on Friday as the country officially left an international convention banning the use of the controversial weapons.

The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention, prohibits signatories

from keeping or using antipersonnel mines, which can last for years and are known for having caused large-scale suffering among civilians in former conflict

zones in countries including Cambodia, Angola and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Poland, which ratified the document in 2012 and completed the destruction of its domestic

anti-personnel mine stockpile in 2016, withdrew from the treaty on Friday and says it plans to renew manufacturing weapons.