Jordan's Queen Noor, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and US Ambassador William Wood watched on large-screen televisions in Bogota's main plaza as Colombia's government destroyed its stockpile of 6,800 land mines in eight thunderous explosions in a rural area.
The unprecedented public act underscored Colombia's commitment to destroy eventually all state-owned mines, Uribe said, even though Marxist rebels who have battled the government for 40 years have increasingly used them
"Be our ambassador, Queen Noor, and tell the world ... that the Colombian government is destroying its mines," Uribe said after live broadcasts on the large screens on Sunday showed the mines being blown up.
The queen, who has worked to encourage countries to remove land mines, sat next to Uribe and applauded as each explosion took place.
Colombia "has been ravaged by internal conflict," she said later in an interview. "And it is unique in the world for being [in conflict] and at the same time destroying its stocks of landmines."
"It takes a lot of courage for the armed forces to take these kinds of decisions," she said.
After the event, Juanes, a Colombian pop star, appeared in the plaza and performed a track from his new album that deals with the everyday life of a soldier.
Hundreds of students in the plaza cheered as Juanes sang. Dozens of land mine victims and soldiers wounded in Colombia's war were also present.
Land mines have become a huge problem in Colombia, whose conflict pits government troops and right-wing militia fighters against two leftist rebel groups. All of the warring sides have planted land mines, making the Andean nation No. 4 in the world for victims of mine blasts, behind Chechnya, Afghanistan and Cambodia.
About 560 people have been killed or injured this year from anti-personnel mines, from just 29 in 1990, according to the office of Vice President Francisco Santos. Of this year's victims, 60 percent were government soldiers.
Colombia in 2000 ratified the Ottawa Convention that calls for banning and destroying all land mines worldwide by 2009. With Sunday's blasts, Colombia has completed the first phase of the pact, which calls for destruction of stockpiled mines, though the military is holding on to several hundred mines for training purposes. In the second phase, the government will destroy thousands of its mines that remain in the ground.
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