GUANTANAMO MINE-CLEARING NEARLY COMPLETE.

U.S. troops are nearly finished clearing tens of thousands of American land mines ringing the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, one of the last remaining Cold War front lines, said Raul Duany, spokesman for the U.S. Southern Command in Miami, reports CANA-Reuters (June 29, 1999).

The operation to remove more than 50,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel mines from along the 17.5 mile (28 km) barbed-wire perimeter fence began in September 1996 as an international campaign by humanitarian groups to ban land mines gained momentum. The task is now in the "verification phase," with personnel using sniffer dogs and specially-fitted bulldozers to sweep through the minefields to ensure all devices have been detected and removed. The minefield was first sown in the early 1960s after U.S.-Cuban relations turned hostile in the wake of Fidel Castro's revolution. The U.S. Southern Command said 18 U.S. servicemen and five Cuban asylum seekers have been killed by the mines. Cuba says it will not remove its mines until the Americans leave the base, which was founded after U.S. Marines landed at the bay in 1898 during the Spanish-American War.