Land Mines Take Toll on Cambodian Peace : Danger: Peacekeeping forces, repatriation of refugees, even elections are imperiled by a legacy of the civil war.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia —  Now that Prince Norodom Sihanouk has returned as head of state of Cambodia, the United Nations is supposed to move rapidly to deploy peacekeeping troops in the country and repatriate thousands of refugees.

But all the plans for implementing the October peace agreement on Cambodia are threatening to founder on the issue of land mines, a legacy of the 13-year civil war.

The four factions in the conflict planted between 500,000 and 2 million mines in the country, by various estimates, especially near Cambodia’s western border with Thailand. Hundreds of legless farmers from Cambodia’s western provinces bear grim testimony to the proliferation of land mines as a weapon of terror.

Among the issues being faced by the world community, now that the war is over, is: Who is responsible for disposing of the mines? Should they be removed by the United Nations? By the factions that planted them? Or should a new military force be created to dispose of them?

“The mines question seems to be a sine qua non for doing anything else in Cambodia,” said a Western diplomat.

For example, the United Nations would like to begin repatriating nearly 360,000 refugees from border camps in Thailand to their homes in Cambodia. But until the roads are clear of mines, U.N. officials won’t send refugee buses back even if the fighting has stopped.

Without the return of the refugees, the country cannot, under the peace agreement, proceed with elections under U.N. auspices. Thus, hopes that elections can be arranged in early 1993 seem unlikely to be fulfilled.

Further, thousands of “internally displaced people,” which is U.N. shorthand for Cambodians who have been forced to flee from their home areas, cannot return until mines are removed.

Nor can the government begin to settle the tens of thousands of soldiers who are required to be demobilized under the peace agreement, which leaves each of the four factions with just 30% of its current forces.

U.N. officials are even saying privately that the peacekeeping forces in the U.N. Transitional Authority in Cambodia will not be able to deploy if roads they are expected to travel are mined.

“De-mining is an issue that really can’t wait,” said Dennis McNamara, the deputy U.N. special representative on Cambodian relief questions.

Although many issues were spelled out in detail in the 19-nation Cambodian peace accord, the land mine problem was not even addressed. It remains a political hot potato that no one wants to touch.

“No U.N. soldier will be doing any de-mining,” said Lt. Col. Alan Beaver, a New Zealand army engineer who is part of an advance team whose function is to provide “mine awareness” training to Cambodians. “I don’t think it’s justified to ask any U.N. soldier to put his own life at risk for a problem of the Cambodians’ own creation.”

The work of de-mining is extremely perilous. Beaver said Phnom Penh government troops recently tried to clear a half-mile stretch of road in the provinces. It took 20 days, and six soldiers were seriously injured in the process.

Beaver said that he needs to get mine experts into Cambodia to conduct de-mining classes. “The next step,” he said, “is to find out where I can get people to train,” an implicit acknowledgment that Cambodian soldiers are unlikely to rush forward to volunteer for the dangerous work.

Colin Mitchell, a former British army colonel who now runs a private trust devoted to clearing mines from war zones, said it is unlikely that even a majority of the mines will be removed from Cambodia.

“It’s a hell of a task,” Mitchell said. “It would take all of the Australian and American armies combined, and they would take heavy casualties as well.”

As both Beaver and Mitchell noted, there are areas of the Solomon Islands, a World War II battle site in the South Pacific, where there are still thousands of undiscovered--and unexploded--land mines.

Mitchell, whose Halo Trust has trained Afghans to remove land mines, has appealed for $1.4 million in funding to start a similar program in Cambodia that would include sophisticated metal-detection equipment. “We’re asking for money to get these mines out of the ground,” Mitchell said. “They give all the money now to helping people get artificial legs. What sense does that make?”

Just about everyone agrees that no matter which approach is chosen, the clearing of mines will not begin before late 1992. And that could seriously delay elections and the transition to genuine peace in the country.