'It's really mind-boggling' Nobel laureate's reaction

Rights groups have expressed alarm and warned of "appalling consequences" of again embracing one of the world's most treacherous weapons, after five European countries said they intended to withdraw from the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.

- Ashifa Kassam

Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all pointed to the escalating military threat from Russia when announcing their plans withdraw from the pact.

In mid-April, Latvia's parliament became the first to formally back the idea, after lawmakers voted to pull out of the 1997 antipersonnel mine ban treaty, which prohibits the use, production and stockpiling of land-mines designed to be used against humans.

Campaigners described the planned reversals - the first among the treaty's more than 165 signatories - as a shocking step backwards.

"It feels like a punch to the face," said Zoran Ješić, who lost his right leg to a landmine in Bosnia and now leads UDAS, a Bosnian organisation that supports landmine survivors. "Antipersonnel landmines do horrible things to innocent people. They belong to a small group of weapons, including chemical and biological weapons, that are so abhorrent they must never be used again."

Ješić was a 21-year-old soldier in the Bosnian army when he stepped on a mine in a forest, leaving him with a lifetime of trauma and disability. "As I later heard, it was our mine," said Ješić. "When you put a mine in the ground, you never know what will happen. Will it wait for your soldiers, your civilians or the enemies? Usually, it hurts your people."

Each year between 70% and 85% of those killed or injured by landmines around the world are civilians. Nearly half of these victims are children.

Alma Taslidžan of Humanity & Inclusion, which works to help disabled and vulnerable people around the world, said campaign-ers had long assumed there was little chance of countries reversing their stances against landmines. "We really thought this kind of movement could never happen with landmines, because who wants landmines?"