Mr. Speaker, the land mines treaty enters into legal force today, a scant 15 months after it was opened for signature in Ottawa on December 1, 1997. It has already been signed by 134 states.
While attention focuses on the few holdout states, which include key permanent members of the security council, it may be argued that because of the wide representation, among its signatories, of all main political, ideological, cultural and regional groupings of the world community, the treaty has already entered into general customary international law and has become legally binding as such on signatory and non-signatory states alike. Dicta in recent jurisprudence of the World Court confirms such a legal thesis.