Land mines threaten Iraqis and hamper development

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Up to 25 million land mines, or almost one for every Iraqi, remain buried in thousands of minefields across Iraq and are hampering development of rich oil deposits, officials said on Wednesday.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the mines were spread across about 4,000 minefields left across Iraq after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the first Gulf War in 1991 and the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

"We have been busy with the biggest threat against our existence, which is terrorism ... so the many mines did not get the attention they deserved," Dabbagh said at a conference with United Nations officials in Baghdad on the problem.

"For every Iraqi citizen there is a mine that could kill him at any moment," he said.

Iraqi Environment Minister Nermeen Othman said she had been appointed by the government to lead efforts to clear Iraq of land mines.

"Because of the contamination by land mines, Iraq has lost access to thousands of hectares of farm lands and been unable to invest in its oil fields," Othman said.

David Shearer, U.N. deputy special representative for humanitarian, reconstruction and development in Iraq, said the heavy contamination of land mines had many different effects.

"The importance of this explosive material is not just about the damage it can do to ordinary people, it also impacts the economic development of Iraq itself," he said.

He said the development of oil reserves and other industries in southern Iraq were being hampered by the presence of mines.

For example, he said in the southern city of Basra, the hub for oil exports that sustain Iraq's fragile economy, 518 sq km of land was unusable because of the presence of land mines.

"The people ... can't use that agricultural area as they should be able to for their own economic development," he said.

Shearer said Iraq last year signed the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines but added that the government and the international community had a responsibility to do more to clear Iraq of mines.

He said it was important that Othman had been charged with leading efforts to clear Iraq of land mines.

"For mine clearance to be effective and the issue to be attacked properly, one ministry needs to be empowered with the resources and the authority to take this forward," he said.

(Reporting by Aseel Kami and Ahmed Rasheed; Writing by Paul Tait)