China has helped nine countries train 230 personnel to clear landmines since 1999.

 

Forty people from Lebanon and Jordan finished a three-month mine clearance training course at Nanjing Institute of Technology on Wednesday.

 

During their stay in China, they learned the theory and the practice of mine clearance -- handling equipment and carrying out mine clearance simulations, sources said.

 

Since 1999, three mine clearance training courses have been organized for foreign personnel in China and Chinese experts visited foreign countries three times to help them clear mines, sources said.

 

China also donated mine clearance equipment valued at several million US dollars to 11 foreign countries, sources added.

 

China has taken an active part in international de-mining assistance programs in recent years. In 2005, ten de-mining specialists helped train Thai personnel. In 2002 and 2003, China sent two groups of de-mining experts to Eritrea for on-site training and donated mine-clearance equipment.

 

In 2001, China donated detection and clearance equipment worth US$1.26 million to countries such as Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

 

China joined the Mine Action Support Group, headquartered in New York, in 2003. China and the Australian Network of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) co-sponsored the Humanitarian Mine/UXO Clearance Technology and Cooperation Workshop in Kunming, Yunnan Province, in April 2004.

 

In 1998, China signed the amended Landmine Protocol of the Convention of Certain Conventional Weapons, which struck the right balance between humanitarian concerns and sovereign states' need to be able to defend themselves.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 21, 2006)