GILGIT, Dec 3 (UNI): The American forces have intensified their search for the world's most wanted terrorists, Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al Zawahiri and Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar, besides several hundred al Qaeda militants in the mountains of Pakistan's Northern Areas.
Sources told UNI here that the activities of the US forces have increased over the past several months possibly to flush out the al Qaeda militants who have reportedly taken refuge in the mountains of Gilgit and Baltistan, jointly known as Balawaristan and part of undivided Jammu and Kashmir.
The sources said US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca and then US Ambassador to Pakistan Nancy Powell visited the Northern Areas in October this year.
They said it was officially announced that Rocca and Powell visited Gilgit and Baltistan to oversee the progress of the development projects funded by the US government.
However, the high-profile visits generated a lot of "enthusiasm and curiosity" in the region, they added.
The sources said after the US launched its war on terror post-9/11, European Union Ambassadors have been visiting the area "quite regularly." They also said the US Army had recently conducted exercises in the Deosai Plateau, one of the highest plateaus in the world and located about 30 km from Skardu at the boundary of the Karakoram and the western Himalayas.
The Deosai Plateau is spread over 3,000 squares km in the Northern Areas of Pakistan.
The plateau, which has been declared as an International Heritage site, is the natural habitat of the endangered Himalayan Brown Bear and other wild animals.
UNICEF calls on India, China, Russia, and US to join Mine Ban Treaty NEW YORK, Dec 3 (UNI): The UNICEF has called on India, China, Russia and the US to join the Mine Ban Treaty and cease production of the weapons, basing its appeal on the chilling reality that landmines claim up to 20,000 victims a year, many of them children.
"Landmines are a deadly attraction for children, whose innate curiosity and need for play often lure them directly into harm's way," UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy yesterday told the first World Summit on a Mine-Free World, being held at the headquarters of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya.
Bellamy said millions of anti-personnel landmines and other explosive remnants of war across the globe posed a vicious threat to children, who were being injured, killed and orphaned by them long after the wars were over.
Calling on the four countries, among the largest holders of the weapon in the world, to do more to assist those whose lives had been disrupted by mines, she said, "Landmines, meant to be used against soldiers in war, are devastating the lives of children at peace." "Countries have a moral responsibility to ratify the Mine Ban Treaty and rid the world of these devastating weapons." Since it went into force five years ago, 143 states have ratified the treaty, which prohibits signatories from using, stockpiling, producing or transferring landmines.
Producing one landmine costs three dollars, yet once in the ground it can cost more than 1,000 dollars to find and destroy, according to the ICBL.
"The cost of playing too close to a landmine is brutal," Bellamy said, citing loss of limbs, blindness, deafness, and injuries to the genital area as some of damage landmines inflict on children.
In part because they are physically smaller, children are more likely than adults to die from landmine injuries.
Over 80 per cent of the 15,000 to 20,000 landmine victims each year are civilians, and at least one in five are children, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).
Among the most contaminated countries are Iraq, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Colombia and Angola.
An ambitious project to clear mines from a wildlife sanctuary in Angola, scene of a three decade-long civil war, was launched at the summit yesterday in a bid to give thousands of elephants and local villagers new hope.
"The direct threat to people from these seeds of misery must be our first concern but it is clear that the environment, upon which local people depend for items such as food, shelter and natural medicines suffers too," UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer said.
The one million dollar project, backed by the California-based Roots of Peace, initially aims to help restore an ancient elephant migration route linking Botswana with Zambia and Angola.
It is part of a wider plan aimed at creating a vast trans-frontier conservation area which is being supported by the governments of Switzerland and the US.
Angola alone has over 2,200 known sites harbouring mines or unexploded ordnance.
In Asia, there are some of the most heavily mine-affected countries in the world.
"Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are a danger to children in nearly half of all villages in Cambodia and nearly one-quarter of all villages in Lao PDR," Bellamy said.
Up to 800,000 tonnes of UXO and 3.5 million landmines still cover Viet Nam, where over 100,000 people have been killed or injured since 1975.
"An estimated 85 per cent of child victims of landmines die before reaching the hospital.
In many cases, landmine injuries occur far from home and without a parent or caregiver's knowledge," she added.
And when treatment is available, the cost can be prohibitive for poor families, particularly because children need more care than adults.
As they grow, new prostheses need to be fitted regularly and a child survivor may have to undergo several amputations.
"Landmines orphan children.
When mothers are maimed or killed, children are less likely to receive adequate nutrition, to be immunized or to be protected from exploitation.
When fathers fall victim to landmines, children are often forced out of school and into work to supplement family income," she added.