Norway won't exit landmine treaty, foreign minister says

OSLO (Reuters) - NATO member Norway will not withdraw from the global convention banning anti-personnel landmines as all the other European countries bordering Russia have done, the country's foreign minister said on Wednesday.

Finland on Tuesday said it planned to quit the 1997 Ottawa Convention as a way to mitigate the military threat posed by its neighbour Russia, following Poland and the Baltic countries, which announced similar moves last month.

That left Norway as the only European country bordering Russia that does not plan for the possibility to stock anti-personnel landmines again, but that is not about to change, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide told Reuters.

It was important to keep a global stigma against a weapon that maims and kills long after a war is over, he said, and to ensure certain types of weapons, including chemical and bacteriological ones, remained ruled out for use in conflict. 

"This particular decision (by Finland) is something that we regret," Barth Eide said in an interview. 

"If we start weakening our commitment, it makes it easier for warring factions around the world to use these weapons again, because it reduces the stigma." 

Norway was not concerned that its defence would be weakened by not changing its policy on anti-personnel landmines, he said. The Nordic country shares a 200km (124 miles) long border with Russia in the far north Arctic region. 

"We have a very modern advanced defence system. We have purchased extremely advanced systems that can attack from land, the air and sea," Eide said.

(This story has been refiled to add a dropped word in paragraph 1)

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, editing by Terje Solsvik and Ed Osmond)