Trump Rollback Of Landmine Limits Weakens US Global Leadership - Senator

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 01st February, 2020) President Donald Trump's decision to lift restrictions on the use of landmines weakens US leadership around the world, Senator Patrick Leahy said in a press release.

Earlier, the White House announced that Trump scrapped an Obama-era policy that banned deployment of anti-personnel landmines outside of the Korean Peninsula.

"The example we set has global ramifications," Leahy said on Friday. "This decision, like so many others of this White House, reverses the gains we have made and weakens our global leadership."

The US Defense Department is issuing a new policy to authorize use of landmines in "exceptional circumstances," the White House said in a statement.

The Trump Administration wants to give the US military "the flexibility and capability it needs to win," the statement added.

An international campaign to ban landmines led to a 1997 treaty, which has been signed by more than 160 nations. The United States refused to sign the treaty, but in 2014, the Obama administration largely aligned the country with the treaty's requirements by banning using mines with the exception for the Korean Peninsula.