Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia want to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention

The Ministry of National Defense announced that, together with the Ministers of Defense of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, unanimously recommend the termination of the Ottaw Convention, among others, for the ban on the use of anti -personnel mines.

On Monday, the Ministry of National Defense announced that “Ministers of Defense of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland unanimously recommend the termination of the Ottawa Convention.” “Our decision is a clear message: our countries are ready and can use any necessary means to defend our territory and freedom,” it was written in a statement.

Ottawska convention – what is this?

The full name of the Ottawa Convention is a convention on the prohibition, storage, production and transfer of anti -personnel mines and their destruction.

Although its text was adopted in September 1997 in Oslo, it was opened for signature in December of the same year in the capital Canadahence the usual name – Ottawa Convention. For the first 40 countries that ratified her, she entered into force in 1999. Although Poland signed the convention as early as December 1997, it delayed the ratification for a long time, because the army was looking for an alternative to mines of weapons. Ultimately, the Sejm agreed to ratify the contract by the president only in 2012, and it began to apply to our country in June 2013.

The convention imposes an obligation to completely get rid of anti-personnel mines on your stages. This means not only a ban on using this type of weapon, but also to produce mines, transfer to other countries or even storage itself. In addition, countries must destroy all their faces within four years of the Convention entry into force. Poland carried out this process by the end of 2016, destroying over a million anti -personnel mines at that time. General Waldemar Skrzypczak, commander of the Land Forces in the years 2006–2009, in an interview with Zasta24, however, recalls that “we parted with these faces without regret”. “They were very old types of the 1940s or the fifties of the 20th century,” he says.

After the possible termination of the Ottawa Convention, Poland could again produce, buy or store faces.