"Tajikistan has already taken considerable steps towards clearing mine-contaminated zones within its territory. However, dealing with the contentious issue of mined border areas within the Ferghana Valley region may require a multilateral approach," said Ambassador Ivar Vikki, the Head of the OSCE Office in Tajikistan. "The OSCE, with its regional presence, is ideally suited to supporting Central Asian states to develop a framework for co-operation on mine clearance challenges."

The Central Asian region faces a number of mine threats, including from Soviet-era minefields, border area mine belts placed after the break up of the Soviet Union and minefields resulting from internal conflicts.

"Regional co-operation initiated by the International Trust Fund for the Western Balkan countries contaminated with landmines proved to be a successful impetus in clearing contaminated areas of bilateral and multilateral concern, and we hope that a similar initiative could support Central Asian mine action," said Jernej Cimpersek, the Deputy Head of Slovenian Permanent Mission to the OSCE in Vienna, who co-chaired the conference.

Since 2003, the OSCE Office in Tajikistan, at the request of the Tajik Government, has assisted the country to address the humanitarian threat posed by landmines. Clearing landmines makes more land available for agriculture and reforestation and also helps to improve cross-border co-operation and monitoring.

The Conference on Facilitating Central Asia Regional Co-operation in Mine Action is part of an OSCE multi-phase project to facilitate regional co-operation in mine clearance activities.