Maputo — Mozambique is to start in March another phase of land mine clearance, following an extension of the time granted under the Ottawa Convention for it to be declared a country free of land mines..

In November 2008, Mozambique presented its request to the other member states of the Ottawa Convention, which bans the production, export, transport and use of land mines.

The Mozambican request was accepted, which means that that the deadline for land mine clearance has been extended by five years, from 2009 to 2014.

According to the director of the Mozambican National Demining Institute, Julio Braga, during this period, 8.5 million US dollars will be spent on demining. Of this sum, 5.5 million dollars are to come from the government's foreign partners, and the remainder from the government' own budget.

"We have a five year plan to ensure that we meet the target of 2014", he said. "Funds for this work will be granted by donors and by the government each year. Donors, who are themselves members of the Ottawa Convention, are aware of the need to finance these land mine clearance activities".

Braga was speaking in Maputo on Thursday, during a ceremony to sign a funding agreement for a mine clearance project in the central province of Manica, to be carried out by the NGO "The HALO Trust".

The document was signed between Japanese Ambassador to Mozambique Susumu Segawa and the HALO Trust representative, Lawrence Timpson.

The agreement grants 600,000 US dollars for mime clearance in that province as part of the contribution from the Japanese government.

Japan has been financing mine clearance in Mozambique since 2002, and has already disbursed about three million US dollars for nine projects in various parts of the country.

The Mozambican government asked for the extension of the deadline because it was aware that it could not possibly complete the work in 2009. There are still too many areas known to be affected by mines, and work is hampered by the lack of any charts of minefields.

Since the signing of the peace agreement between the government and the apartheid-backed Renamo rebels in October 1992, demining has been under way, but Mozambique has not yet met its targets, partly because of difficult access mined areas,

Between 2002 and 2007, the Mozambican government invested 484 million meticais (about 19 million US dollars at current exchange rates) in demining in the three northern provinces of Cabo Delgado, Niassa and Nampula, and the central province of Zambezia.

The director of the National Demining Institute believes that despite the fact that these four provinces have, in theory, been cleared, they may still be mines there in areas not yet identified by the sappers.

"Over the next five years, the operators will undertake demolition work in areas in these four provinces that have residual problems", said Braga.

But the priorities for the next five years will be the central provinces of Sofala and Tete, and Gaza and Inhambane in the south

As for Maputo province, demining is set to end this year, while in Manica the remaining areas are to be worked on as from next Monday, under the agreement signed with Japan, benefiting directly 50,000 people and indirectly 125,000.

Inhambane, Sofala, and Tete are thought to be the provinces with the most serious land mine problems. A study carried out in 2000 and 2001 showed that there are 484 mined areas and a further 1,374 suspected areas. The study showed that in these provinces 791 villages and 1.7 million people are affected.

Data from the Mozambican government are that 427 accidents with land mines were recorded across the country, causing 275 deaths and 444 injuries, between 1996 and 2007.