US "Bullying" Hurts Cluster Bomb Ban Work-Activists

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US "Bullying" Hurts Cluster Bomb Ban Work-Activists
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IRELAND: May 26, 2008


DUBLIN - The United States is trying to bully its allies into weakening a treaty banning cluster bombs, Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for leading a campaign against landmines, said on Friday.


Representatives of more than 100 nations are working on an agreement against the use of cluster munitions, although the United States, China and Russia are not participating. Opponents say cluster bombs are unreliable and indiscriminate.

The United States said on Wednesday the treaty could jeopardise US participation in joint peacekeeping and disaster relief operations by "criminalising" military operations between countries that signed the ban and those that did not.

Jody Williams, who won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize together with her International Campaign to Ban Landmines, said genuine peacekeeping operations backed by the United Nations would not be affected by a global ban on cluster bombs.

"I hate to see countries like Canada for example, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, who were leaders in the movement to ban landmines, doing the dirty work of the U.S," she said.

"They are trying to create a loophole big enough to fly a US attack helicopter loaded with cluster munitions through it," she told Reuters by telephone after attending a protest outside the US embassy in Dublin.

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