The Sejm adopted a law on the termination of the Ottawa Convention prohibiting the usage of anti-personnel mines. "For" voted 413 Members, 15 were against and 3 abstained. Poland, together with the Baltic States and Finland, resigns from the global agreement due to threats from Russia. Now the bill will be examined by the Senate.
To let Members to terminate the Ottawa Convention, which prohibits the use, production, retention and transfer of anti-personnel mines and orders their destruction, appealed Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamish. As he stressed just before the parliament vote, this is an crucial step for safety in the region. “Poland must not be covered by any corset preventing the defence of our homeland,” said the head of the MON. The decision to pronounce the Ottawa Convention was besides taken by the Baltic States and Finland after Poland came up with specified an initiative.
Last night, the Sejm agreed to the politicians' argument and adopted a law to denounce the convention. 413 MPs voted for it, 15 (nine from the Left Parliamentary Club, 3 from the Poselski ellipse Together and 3 from the Civic Coalition) voted against. 3 abstentions.
The government bill on this substance went to parliament in May. This initiative justified before the Parliamentary Defence Committee and the Parliamentary abroad Affairs Committee Paweł Zalewski, Deputy Chief of MON. As he said, possible opponents can exploit the imbalance in military capabilities resulting from our legal and moral limitations. He besides noted that denunciation of the convention does not mean that Poland resigns from complying with global humanitarian law.
The debate on the termination of the Ottawa Convention has been going on for respective months. The east flank states which border the Russian Federation decided to retreat from the agreement at the same time. Last week the Finnish Parliament decided to denounce this convention, the Baltic States had previously taken akin decisions.
Now the bill will be examined by the Senate, then it will be signed by the President. Six months after approval by the head of the State of the decision to terminate the Convention, Poland will cease to apply.
The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Storage, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on the demolition of Mines is simply a paper in which more than 160 countries have undertaken not to usage specified weapons. Its victims were mostly civilians. The mines threatened even many years after the war ended. Poland signed the Treaty in 1997 and ratified it in 2012. Military powers specified as the US, Israel, China, Iran and Russia have not entered into the agreement.
Following Russia's attack on Ukraine and the Kremlin's threats directed at NATO allies, any signatories to the convention decided to denounce it.
