China will send two police dogs to help locate landmines in
Lebanon for the United Nations Peacekeeping Forces' (UNPF) mission
in the middle of March.
"The dogs are qualified to conduct overseas missions," said
inspectors from UNPF's team organization group in Kunming on
Thursday, after conducting the examination of the dogs in Kunming,
capital of Southwest China's Yunnan Province.
Kunming police dogs were bred by Chinese scientists in the
1980s. The dogs will aid the clearance of 182 landmines and road
construction soldiers in the UNPF's mission in Lebanon.
"Within two minutes, these two Kunming police dogs sniffed out
two landmines buried 12 inches underground in an area measuring 30
square meters," said one examiner from UNPF. "They've done an
excellent job."
China has actively taken part in the UN's peacekeeping
operations. It is the first time for Chinese police dogs to join in
the UNPF's landmine clearance mission, said Yang Yinghui, a
22-year-old trainer in Kunming Police Dogs Training Center
(KPDTC).
"They are trained to respond to any suspicious subjects with
vigilance, said Yang, who named the dog "Wuzu," which literally
means "no obstacles" in Chinese.
China's landmine clearance troop is to undertake the so-called
"Green Clearance" in Lebanon. The mission demands very high skills
from the dogs, said Yang.
Yang and his comrade Li Hu, who will accompany the two police
dogs for the UNPF's mission, spent two months in the center
training the two police dogs with special landmine clearance
techniques.
The center received a request from UN in December, 2005 for the
police dogs. "Our trainers immediately carried out systematic
training of landmine clearance," said Zhang Zhi, an officer of the
police dog training center.
The two dogs were carefully selected from thousands of police
dogs in the training center.
"Both these two dogs have passed many qualification tests from
the very beginning of their births, pre-puberty training and adult
professional training," said Zhang.
The police dogs in the training center have earned high
reputation in anti-smuggling missions along China's borders. The
center has supplied over 13,000 dogs with special talents for
various services nationwide.
(Xinhua News Agency March 3, 2006)
