Warfare : DANGEROUS GROUND : From Afghanistan to El Salvador, land mines remain lethal long after wars are over. Some now want a worldwide ban on their use.

Afghanistan. Cambodia. Iraqi Kurdistan. Angola. Somalia. El Salvador. Vietnam. Uganda. Guatemala. Ethiopia. Sudan. Mozambique. Myanmar (formerly Burma). All these crisis points and former crisis points share a grim, lethal legacy of years of war: land mines.

A spotlight has fallen on this problem now because of the flow of refugees starting to head back to Cambodia under U.N. supervision. The United Nations has an elaborate plan to give the returnees land to till, but much of the land is now infested with mines.

Human Rights Watch, an umbrella organization that includes Asia Watch, also is starting a campaign to alert the world both to the need for clearing the land mines from countries like Cambodia and Afghanistan and to the need for an international ban on land mines.

BACKGROUND: There now is a U.N. agreement that limits the use of land mines to attacks on military personnel and equipment. But the agreement is largely ignored, and the mines tend to kill and maim more civilians than soldiers.

“What we hope,” says Kenneth Roth, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, “is that we can show that land mines are as inherently indiscriminate as chemical and biological weapons and thus promote a ban on their use that is comparable to the ban on these other weapons.”

Prince Norodom Sihanouk, president of Cambodia’s Supreme National Council, has called for the United Nations to ban the mines, telling the General Assembly last September: “These land mines have already handicapped a great number of our compatriots of both sexes and pose a permanent threat to our existence.”

The international protocol on land mines took effect in 1983. It prohibits warring parties from planting mines that could be expected “to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects . . . which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

But what is excessive? That condition leaves a large loophole in international regulation. Military officers can easily contend that they had military targets--armored cars and soldiers--in mind when they laid the mines and did not expect them to maim many civilians.

Human Rights Watch, however, argues that land mines, by their nature, kill more civilians than soldiers and that, in many cases, the mines are laid because the military wants to intimidate civilians.

In fact, the protocol, which does not even apply to internal conflicts like that of Cambodia, is simply ignored by almost all warring parties.

IMPACT: According to a report issued late last year by Asia Watch and the Physicians for Human Rights, Cambodia--where there has been warfare for almost two decades--has 30,000 people with amputated arms and legs. Another 5,000 to 6,000 amputees live in refugee camps along the Thai border.

In Afghanistan, experts estimate there are almost as many mines and amputees as in Cambodia.

In Angola, the worst offenders in planting mines appear to be the American-backed UNITA guerrillas who fought the leftist government there for many years.

Although most of the mines in Nicaragua’s civil war were planted by the American-financed Contras, Los Angeles Times correspondent Dial Torgerson and free-lance photographer Richard Cross were killed on the Honduran border in 1983 by a land mine evidently planted by the Sandinista troops of the Nicaraguan government.

In Cambodia in 1990 alone, according to the Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights report, at least 6,000 Cambodians lost limbs in land mine explosions. Almost as many died from loss of blood.

“Most of the casualties were civilians--peasants who stepped on mines while gathering firewood, harvesting rice, herding animals or fishing,” the report said, adding: “The Cambodian conflict may be the first war in history in which land mines have claimed more victims--combatants and noncombatants alike--than any other weapon.”

The land mines have been laid by all sides in two decades of conflict: the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese-backed government in the 1980s, the rebels of Prince Sihanouk, the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, the original American-backed Lon Nol government.

The mines were mostly supplied by China, the Soviet Union, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States.

OUTLOOK: In an all-too-familiar description of the condition of a country dealing with the deadly devices, the United Nations estimates that “the prevalence of unexploded mines will be a problem in Cambodia for many years to come,” according to a recent report by Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The United Nations has established a Cambodian Mine Action Center, sent six teams to northwestern Cambodia to train Cambodians in mine-clearing and made plans for four more teams. By year’s end, the United Nations hopes that 5,000 Cambodians will be trained to clear mines.

But the results are meager so far.

As countries around the globe struggle with the dangerous, complicated task of removing mines from strife-torn areas, the United Nations is not expected to take up the issue of possibly banning the devices until next year. Human Rights Watch wants a new international treaty to ban all use of land mines, without conditions.

Mine Clearing Equipment

Gear for finding and clearing mines ranges from simple hand-held detectors to plow-like devices the size of trucks.

Aardvark Joint Services Flail Unit

Scottish-built device to clear plastic antipersonnel and antitank mines. Flail assembly mounted on an armored half-track vehicle, attached to the rear chassis. Rotating action of the flail detonates mines, clearing a path 10 feet wide.

Giant Viper

Large plows are used by fighting vehicles to clear path through the minefield.

1. British-made, 700-foot hose colled in 2-ton box, 3 inch diameter, filled with plastic explosive.

2. A cluster of eight rockets propels the hose

3. Three parachutes guide the tail as it straightens.

4. Charge is fired electrically from towing vehicle and explodes, neutralizing mines.

5. The hose blasts a passage for vehicles at least 600 feet long and 24 feet wide.

Scattered in Cambodia and Throughout the World

Valsella Valmara 69--Italian Antipersonnel Bounding Mine

Cylindrical shape in plastic case with removable fuse mounted on top; spikes project out of top at angles.

Bursts into more than 1,000 metal splinters. Lethal radius is at least 82 feet.

Detonated by tripwire or by direct pressure on one or more of the fuse prongs.

Fully waterproof.

Specifications:

Weight: 6.6 lbs.

Diameter: 5.1 inches

Height (with fuse): 8.07 inches

Main charge: Composition B

Weight of main charge: 0.9 lb.

Type of booster charge: RDX

OZM Series Soviet-Made Bounding Antipersonnel Mine--”Bouncing Betty”

Fires a grenade waist-or chest-high before exploding.

Detonates by either remote electrical fire, pressure on a fuse or by pulling a wire attached to the fuse.

Explodes 5 feet to 8 feet above the ground with an effective radius of 82 feet and can blow a person apart.

Specifications (OZM-3):

Weight: 6.6 lbs.

Diameter: 2.95 inches

Height: 4.7 inches

Main charge: TNT

TM-46--Soviet Antitank Mine

Metallic and laid either by hand or mechanically.

Detonated by pressure.

Versions are produced in Israel, China Egypt and Bulgaria.

Specifications:

Weight: 19.55 lbs.

Diameter: 12 inches

Height: 4.33 inches

Main charge: TNT

Weight of main charge: 13.09 lbs.

Type of booster charge: Tetryl

PMN Soviet-Made Antipersonnel Mine

Most significant numerically and used extensively in combat throughout the world. Made of plastic with rubber cover.

Hard to defuse.

Detonates with pressure and can easily remove a leg.

Estimated that hundreds of thousands were deployed in Afghanistan.

Specifications:

Weight: 1.3 lbs.

Diameter: 4.4 inches

Height: 2.2 inches

Main charge: TNT

Sources: Jane’s Military Logistics; U.S. Army: Weapons Systems; David Isby, Washington-based national security consultant.