C AMBODIA celebrated International Peace Day, on Sept 19, with a special prayer

meeting for peace, to ban landmines and remember those killed during war.

The ceromony was also to send off a delegation, headed by Information

Minister Ieng Mouly, to the UN Review Conference on the Convention on

Conventional Weapons in Vienna on Sept 25.

Monks, nuns, foreign and local

NGOs, disabled and religious groups - one which came from Taiwan - gathered at

the Independence Monument to pray, led by the Venerable Samdech Preah Maha

Ghosananda.

Speeches were given by Prince Ranariddh, Ghosananda and NGO

representives.

Ghosananda said: "We pray for peace in Cambodia and all

over the world. And we know there can by no peace with landmines."

In a

message read by Prince Ranariddh, King Sihanouk appealed to countries producing

landmines to join the Royal government in enforcing a ban on the use,

production, stockpiling, sale and export of anti-personnel mines, including the

new generation of "self-destruct" or "self-neutralising" electronic

mines.

The director of the Khmer Women's Voice Center, Koy Veth, who

attended the women's conference in Beijing, said among 3,000 topics put forward

at the conference, the ban on mines was one of the most discussed.

"They

were impressed, especially by the video tape we showed about the tragedy and the

suffering of women and children by mines", she said.

The ceromony was

organized by the Cambodia Campaign to Ban Landmines.