Middle East and North Africa: US Cuts Cluster Bomb Supply

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Human Rights Watch

Middle East and North Africa: US Cuts Cluster Bomb Supply
US Export Ban Should Spur Countries to Sign Treaty Banning the Weapon
March 18, 2009

(New York) - A new US law permanently banning nearly all cluster bomb exports by the United States will end a long period of transfers of the weapon to Israel and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Human Rights Watch said today. The measure should spur the countries in the region as well as the US to join the international treaty prohibiting cluster munitions, Human Rights Watch said.

The US export ban was included in an omnibus budget bill (HR 1105) that President Barack Obama signed into law on March 11, 2009. Under the law, the US can only export cluster munitions that leave behind less than 1 percent of their submunitions as duds. These duds act like landmines on the ground, exploding when touched by unwitting civilians. The legislation also requires the receiving country to agree that cluster munitions "will not be used where civilians are known to be present." Only a tiny fraction of the cluster munitions in the US arsenal meet the 1-percent standard.

"US-supplied cluster munitions have caused great harm to civilians in Lebanon, Iraq, Western Sahara and elsewhere in the region," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "These countries should consider the export ban a first step toward ridding the region of this unreliable and inaccurate weapon that claims civilian lives and limbs for years following its use."

The 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions prohibits the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of cluster munitions, and provides strict deadlines for clearance of affected areas and destruction of stockpiled cluster munitions. A total of 95 countries have signed the convention, including Lebanon and Tunisia from the Middle East and North Africa.

Read more: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/18/middle-east-and-north-africa-us-cuts-cluster-bomb-supply

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. So we can no longer export them -

the only people that can use our cluster bombs is us.

THAT'S comforting.

[mopinko]

2. no, that is a huge step.

huge. i am so happy to see this. the world will be a different place when the us stops selling arms to anyone with cash. and especially if we stop handing out cash to buy arms.

[The Blue Flower]

3. It IS a huge step

These are absolutely evil weapons. I love our President.

[mopinko]

5. i think he takes a great risk here, also.

taking on the death merchants can make bad things happen.

[The Stranger]

4. Thank God for Barack Obama.

Every little news piece I read, with the huge and bizarre exception of the opposing the torture civil cases, shows this Administration doing what is right.

I didn't know how bad the Criminal Bush Administration was until the world began to emerge from it.