APS : TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2017
DJELFA- Algeria has shown a “strong commitment” to Ottawa Convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines, affirmed Monday, in Djelfa, president of the Assembly of the States Parties to the Convention Thomas Hajnoczi.
Speaking on the occasion of the final phase of the public destruction of the stock of anti-personnel mines, chaired in Djelfa by the Deputy Minister for National Defence and Chief of Staff of the People’s National Army, Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaid Salah, Hajnoczi underlined that “Algeria has shown, since the beginning, a strong commitment” to the Convention and its implementation, by participating to its signing in December 1997 and then ratifying it in 2001.
Congratulating Algeria for this “very important event,” he added that the country “has spared, since 2002, no effort to meet its obligations as part of the Convention and worked relentlessly to achieve it.”
“In 2005, Algeria announced that it destroyed, even before the deadline set by the Convention, its stock of anti-personnel mines, keeping a small number of mines for training purposes,” he added, pointing out that in the beginning of the current year, it “officially announced that, after decades of work, it has carried out one of the key objectives of the Convention.”
