- Title: VARIOUS: Around one hundred states are set to sign a cluster bomb ban
- Date: 2nd December 2008
- Summary: COORDINATOR OF THE CLUSTER MUNITION COALITION, THOMAS NASH, ADDRESSING JOURNALISTS JOURNALISTS LISTENING (SOUNDBITE) (English) COORDINATOR OF THE CLUSTER MUNITION COALITION, THOMAS NASH, SAYING: "What we will see with the ban on cluster munitions is that the weapon will become a thing of the past - morally, legally and commercially this weapon is not going to be acceptabl
- Embargoed: 17th December 2008 12:00
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- Story Text: Cluster bombs are still killing and maiming people in south Lebanon, a hilly region of towns and farming villages where nearly all the land is used for crops or grazing.
Two years ago in the village of Halta in south Lebanon, 50-year-old Ali Hussein Shibleh was waiting at home for his sons -- 11-year-old Ramy and 13-year-old Khodor. While waiting he heard the explosion that took the life of his youngest son and wounded his oldest.
The brothers were heading home when the wheel of their cart jammed against what they thought was a rock, but the rock exploded. It was an unexploded cluster bomb.
A year and half later Ali was tending his sheep when another cluster bomb exploded under his foot.
"I was tending my flock when something exploded under my foot .
My son was with me when the cluster bomb exploded and my son called for his mother and village members and they took me to the hospital where they operated on me and amputated my foot," Shibleh explains.
"I lost my son because of a cluster bomb and my other son is injured and to this day is still being treated," he added.
Israel inadvertently galvanised an international campaign to ban cluster munitions by hastily raining bomblets over south Lebanon before a United Nations-agreed halt to its 2006 war with Hezbollah fighters could take effect.
Norway initiated negotiations on a treaty outlawing cluster munitions which about 100 nations -- but not Israel, the United States, Russia nor China -- are due to sign in Oslo later this week.
The Beirut government pushed hard for the treaty and Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh says he will be in Norway to sign it.
Shibleh is among more than 270 people wounded by cluster munitions in Lebanon since the war. About 40 have been killed.
Israel, which attacked Lebanon after Hezbollah seized two of its soldiers in a cross-border raid, says it uses cluster bombs in line with international law, which doesn't bar them outright.
Human Rights Watch, which has reported that Hezbollah also used some rockets with cluster components indiscriminately, says Israel violated prohibitions on targeting civilian areas when it sprayed the munitions from planes, rockets and artillery.
More than two years on, clearance teams have cleared 48 million square metres of cluster bombs and other unexploded weaponry in the south, according to Dalya Farran, spokeswoman for the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon.
"As of today we've located 1,061 cluster bomb strike areas, covering an estimated area full of cluster bombs of more than 48 million square metres. That area we've cleared large part of it, but still there is some 12 percent of this estimated area remaining for 2009 to be cleared if enough funds and enough team were available," Farran explained.
Large areas still need to be cleared beneath the surface. Some lower-priority places have yet to be searched properly.
Children are particularly at risk from the bomblets, many of which have white ribbons as part of their detonation mechanism.
Campaigners for the treaty, adopted by 107 states in Dublin in May, say they are mostly delighted by its terms, requiring signatories to renounce the use, production, stockpiling and trade in cluster munitions. It also requires states to assist victims and family members and communities affected.
Some countries had argued for cluster munitions with self-destruct mechanisms to be exempted, but the agreed text of the convention exempts only a much narrower category.
Cluster bombs contain up to hundreds of submunitions or "bomblets" that blanket wide areas, which proponents of the ban say makes them indiscriminate killers. They are dropped from aircraft or launched by artillery on the ground.
But the real horror of cluster munitions, campaigners say, is that the submunitions often fail to detonate on impact, and duds on the ground are easily triggered and maim and kill civilians for decades after they are fired in combat.
Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), an umbrella group for organisations that worked for the ban, said that the treaty would stigmatise the weapon even among those who do not sign it.
"What we will see with the ban on cluster munitions is that the weapon will become a thing of the past - morally, legally and commercially this weapon is not going to be acceptable. The trade is going to dry up when all of the countries here in Oslo sign the treaty and start implementing it," Nash said.
The big military and arms-producing powers, the United States, China and Russia, will be absent from the December 3 to 4 signing ceremony at Oslo's City Hall, though many of Washington's NATO allies will sign the convention.
"There are some countries in the world that don't seem to like to sign international treaties. The United States, Russia and China are three that come to mind, there are many treaties they have not signed. They won't be here in Oslo next week and we regret that. Those countries, if they want to be part of the international community that is protecting civilians in armed conflict, should sign this treaty in Oslo," Nash said.
The treaty will also require states to assist victims, including family members of victims, and communities affected by the weapons.
"The treaty is a comprehensive ban on cluster munitions, but it goes beyond that. Not only are these weapons to be banned forever but the treaty also obliges countries to clear up the unexploded cluster bombs that contaminate countries like Laos and Lebanon. They must destroy all their cluster bombs in stockpiles and they must provide comprehensive assistance to the people affected - the victims and their families and communities,"
Nash explained.
Millions of cluster bombs containing billions of submunitions are stockpiled by at least 77 states, 34 countries are known to have produced them, and they have been used in more than 30 countries or regions, CMC said.
Expected signatories include about half the stockpilers and producers, Nash said.
The CMC says that the victims over the decades number in the tens of thousands, but the real numbers will never be known.
Laos is the country most saturated with cluster munitions dating from the Vietnam War but the weapon's most recent widespread use was in Lebanon in 2006.
Nash said that Russia and Georgia used cluster munitions during their conflict this year over South Ossetia, though Russia denies it while Georgia has admitted to using them. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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