GENEVA, June 25: The United States (US) yesterday tripped in its bid to get the Conference on Disarmament (CD) to begin work on a global deal to ban landmines.

But, Washington said it would make a renewed effort on Thursday to get the 61-member United Nations (UN)-sponsored CD to back Western proposals to name a special coordinator on landmines.

The appointee would seek consensus in Geneva to launch negotiations on a global accord which would ban the use, production and transfer of certain types of landmines.

The US also called for immediate negotiations on a Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), independent of any commitments to a wider nuclear disarmament process. Such a treaty, Washington said, was the next ``logical'' step after the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

``I hope we will be in a position to take a positive decision on Thursday (on landmines),'' Katharine Crittenberger, acting head of the US delegation, said. In her speech, Crittenberger backed work on landmines in Geneva, which unlike Canada's ``Ottawa Process'' includes China and Russia, both major users and producers.

Belgium is hosting four-day talks, beginning today, under Canada's initiative, which aims to clinch the first anti-mines treaty by December.Diplomats say yesterday's failure on landmines compounds several weeks of frustration because of the CD's failure to agree on a work programme and for weeks both the nuclear weapons states and the non-nuclear weapons states have been shooting from traditionally entrenched positions.

The West wants a quick deal on landmines and fissile material, while developing countries, including India, say nuclear disarmament should also be a priority a call that has been rejected by the nuclear five China, France, the United Kingdom, the US and Russia.

India backs, what it has called, a ``pragmatic and phased'' approach to the elimination of landmines, but wants the CD to negotiate an international treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons within which, it says, an FMCT can be placed.

New Delhi, which along with the US co-sponsored a 1993 resolution asking the CD to negotiate a CTBT and FMCT wants the latter to be part of a wider negotiations on complete nuclear disarmament.

India's position has been christened ``hardline'' by the Western diplomats and media, who say New Delhi is linking success on any issue in the CD to progress on setting up an ad-hoc committee to begging total nuclear disarmament talks.

Crittenberger said the ``next logical step'' for the CD would be to begin negotiations on a treaty that would ban production of fissile material for weapons production.

``All those who consider nuclear disarmament as a priority for the CD should look upon the negotiations of a FMCT as an important and positive step,'' Crittenberger said in a statement that was widely interpreted by diplomats as containing a message for India.

The American negotiator said the CTBT had constrained qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons and time had come, through an FMCT, to place an upper limit on the amount of fissile material that can be used for nuclear weapons. ``The nuclear weapon states would then be asked to accept a permanent legal constraint embodying what is now a voluntary and reversible policy,'' Crittenberger said.

Quoting her Italian colleague, she said it made little sense to ban nuclear tests, as the CTBT does, but allow the free and unhindered production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the fissile material used to make nuclear bombs.

Many of the negotiators said today the body looks set to return for its last seven-week round on July 28 without a definite agenda and no sight of consensus on issues ranging from land mines to the FMCT.

Cuba and Syria, backed by Burma and Morocco, want negotiations banning landmines to run parallel to those on nuclear disarmament. Mexico, under heavy diplomatic pressure from the US, caved in last week by abandoning its resistance to landmine negotiations.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.