Source:
AFPLONDON (AFP) — Envoys from around 100 countries are to gather in Dublin on Monday for a 12-day conference aimed at clinching an international treaty banning cluster munitions ...
But notable absentees from the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions, which concludes on May 30, include China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the United States: all major producers and stockpilers.
Following meetings in Lima, Vienna and Wellington, the Dublin gathering will thrash out a definitive agreement, to be signed in Oslo on December 2-3. Signatories would then need to ratify it.
The process, started by Norway in February 2007, has taken the same path as the landmark 1997 Ottawa Treaty ban on anti-personnel landmines: going outside the United Nations to avoid vetoes and seal a swift treaty ...
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http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5u7R_Y9hiWRRDyzIJAU0ebghglA
Last Updated: 16/05/2008 21:20
Dublin to host talks on cluster bombs
... Ad Melkert, associate administrator of the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), said there is a good chance that the conference, which starts on Monday and runs through May 30th, will end with the signing of a treaty outlawing cluster bombs ...
"It is regrettable that the U.S. and a handful of other states continue to insist on their need to use a weapon that the rest of world is banning," said Steve Goose, director of the arms division at the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
But US allies such as Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and Sweden are lobbying for the exclusion of some cluster bombs from the ban, diplomats said ...
The UNDP says cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon ...
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0516/breaking84.htmCluster bomb advocates skip Dublin
Sat, 17 May 2008 06:31:09
... Meanwhile, Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US mission to the UN said, “We are opposed to any ban on cluster munitions. We do not believe they are indiscriminate weapons" ...
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=56089§ionid=351020606Canada's dilemma
Our relationship with the U.S. and NATO makes it tricky to sign a treaty banning cluster bombs
Chris Cobb, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, May 17, 2008
... Canada, which does not produce or use the weapons and is in the process of destroying its existing stockpile, faces a dilemma in signing the treaty because of its military relationship with the United States and NATO in Afghanistan ...
European aid groups, including Handicap International, have accused the United States of attempting to undermine the treaty process by threatening vulnerable countries reliant on U.S. aid. The U.S. used a similar tactic during the latter stages of the landmine treaty ...
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=e9c4d10f-79af-410b-8f5a-ea98ec962e3cNEWS ANALYSIS
Treaty for cluster bombs expected during upcoming conference
By Nick Cumming-Bruce
Published: May 16, 2008
In Laos, where the United States dropped two million tons of ordnance in the 1970s, including an estimated 260 million submunitions, unexploded weapons still kill and maim people and hinder economic development.
As many as 10 percent to 15 percent of cluster munitions normally fail to explode on impact but campaigners say the figure could be much higher. A study by Handicap International, a nongovernmental organization based in Belgium, found that 98 percent of recorded victims were civilians and one-third of casualties were children ...
"Cluster munitions haven't yet spread as they are poised to do," says Patricia Lewis, director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research in Geneva. Many of the cluster munitions in western inventories are outdated and due to be replaced and would be sold cheap to poorer countries.
Without the treaty, "clusters would become a weapon of choice for a wide range of countries," she said. "We can act now to prevent human suffering on a potentially massive scale," Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross and an opening speaker at the Dublin conference, said in a statement issued Wednesday ...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/16/europe/cluster.phpStates Should Resist Weakening Treaty in Any Way
BBSNews 2008-05-16 -- Dublin (HRW) ...
There will likely be three main areas of contention during the two-week negotiations. First, some states -- most notably Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom -- are seeking exceptions from the ban for certain weapons in their own arsenals, claiming they are still needed militarily and that they will not cause as much harm as other cluster munitions.
Second, some countries are seeking a "transition period" of more than seven years during which they would still be able to use banned cluster munitions, claiming that they cannot give up the weapons until they have developed military alternatives. The strongest calls for a transition period are likely to come from France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, all of whom acknowledge that the weapons cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
Third, some states are seeking to delete or gut a provision in the treaty that prohibits states parties from assisting others firing cluster munitions during joint military operations. Those most vocal on the "interoperability" issue include Australia, Canada, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The United States has been pressuring many of its allies on this matter behind the scenes ...
http://bbsnews.net/article.php/2008051611484085Pope Backs Global Ban on Cluster Bombs
By VOA News
18 May 2008
Pope Benedict XVI has urged diplomats at an international conference in Dublin to sign a treaty banning cluster bombs, which have killed or wounded thousands of civilians.
Benedict said Sunday it is "necessary to correct the errors of the past." He also prayed for the victims of the bombs and their families.
Cluster bombs are fired from the ground or dropped from planes. They explode in mid-air and scatter hundreds of smaller bombs over a wide area. The unexploded small bombs can stay hidden for months before blowing up ...
The U.N. says most cluster bomb victims are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon and Vietnam ...
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-05-18-voa22.cfmCalls for ban on cluster bombs
Sunday, 18 May 2008 21:51
The country's Catholic bishops have called on the Government to ban the use and promotion of cluster bombs. The Catholic organisation Pax Christi has expressed surprise that such legislation has not already been enacted ... Meanwhile, the Irish Commission for Justice and Social Affairs and Trócaire have also called on the Irish Government to pass laws banning cluster bombs ...
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0518/clusterbombs.htmlMartin Bell: The UK has no ethical foreign policy if it battles to keep these munitions
Monday, 19 May 2008
... Most senior military figures I know have no time for cluster munitions, on military as well as humanitarian grounds. A former adjutant general, Lord Ramsbotham, told the House of Lords: "I can find no justification for the deployment of these weapons in any activity the British arms has been involved in since the end of the Cold War."
They are weapons of territory denial which substitute for infantry, but end up endangering the soldiers they are designed to protect. The UK's intervention in Kosovo was casualty-free in military terms, except for the soldiers who risked their lives – and in some cases lost them – trying to clear the unexploded ordnance.
Those deaths were exceptional. In all recent recorded cases of cluster bomb casualties, 98 per cent of the victims were civilians. Two groups are especially at risk: farmers trying to reclaim their fields after a conflict, and children, whose energy and curiosity put them in harm's way. The bomblets' toy-like appearance and bright yellow colour makes them fatally attractive to the young. Boys are extremely vulnerable. Statistics for the war in Iraq are (perhaps deliberately) hard to come by, but cluster munitions were widely used by the British, especially in the initial bombardment in March and April 2003 ...
Cluster munitions are not new. I grew up among them in the Second World War, when they were known as the "butterfly bombs" dropped by the Germans over my native Suffolk. They were weapons of terror then. They are weapons of terror now. They contravene the Geneva Conventions. They are neither more nor less than aerially sown anti-personnel mines. And the world should stigmatise them in exactly the same way.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/martin-bell-the-uk-has-no-ethical-foreign-policy-if-it-battles-to-keep-these-munitions-830578.html
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