VARIOUS: Amnesty International calls for U.N. inquiry of Israeli cluster bombs in Lebanon, Israeli military says munitions were used legally

Record ID: 357041

  • Title: VARIOUS: Amnesty International calls for U.N. inquiry of Israeli cluster bombs in Lebanon, Israeli military says munitions were used legally
  • Date: 6th September 2006
  • Summary: (AM) WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (RECENT - SEPTEMBER 1, 2006) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) RALPH G. STEINHARDT, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW PROFESSOR, SAYING: "It's quite clear that countries and private actors might face liability if they provided illegal - inherently illegal weapons. On the other hand if you provided and sold legal weapons, but they were used
  • Embargoed: 21st September 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA161MB1P2DLSBD77VN2MZDB1BC
  • Story Text: Explosive ordnance spread by cluster bombs lie across Lebanon's fields and villages, and will remain there for months, and possibly longer, a United Nations research team reported this week.
    British-based demining group, Land Mine Action, said it could take ten years to clear Lebanon of the deadly munitions.
    Cluster munitions used by the Israeli military consist of a shell carrying dozens of smaller "bomblets," which are about the size of a soda can. When the larger shell is dropped by from a plane for instance, it breaks apart, spreading the bomblets over swath of land below.
    The problem, the United Nations and aid workers say, is that many bomblets do not explode on impact to the ground. Land Mine Action says 40 percent don't explode immediately. They sit wherever they land, still armed, effectively becoming anti-personnel land mines.
    Fay Mahid from the aid organisation "Save the Children," is working in Lebanon. She says the unexploded bomblets are often most dangerous to the youngest residents of areas where they have been dropped.
    "Children, especially young children, are very vulnerable. Particularly, for example, cluster bombs have fallen around the area. They're very small. They're not always easy to see. Some of them are brightly coloured and maybe mistaken by children for toys," Mahid said.
    Children recuperating in a Tyre hospital are living illustrations of the risk cluster bomblets pose. Shrapnel wounds, dismemberment, and death can occur just by being near the bomblets, which ordnance experts say can sometimes detonate by vibrations in the ground.
    The United Nations says the problem is widespread across Lebanon.
    U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland described the scope of the problem recently, calling the use of cluster bombs late in the Israel-Hizbollah conflict as "immoral."
    "They identified 359 separate cluster bomb strike locations that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets. What's shocking and I would say to me completely immoral is that 90 per cent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution, when we really knew there would be an end of this," Egeland said.
    He estimated it would take a year to 15 months to clean up the bombs, which are spread over large areas near homes, in farmland and commercial centres. Egeland said the ordnance in populated areas prevents 250,000 residents from returning to their homes, shops, fields, and pastures.
    But while Egeland called the use of cluster munitions "immoral," Claudio Cordone, Senior Director at Amnesty International says it's possible international law has been violated by both Hizbollah and Israel in the recent conflict.
    He's calling for an investigation into both Israeli actions during the conflict, and the actions of Hizbollah.
    "Amnesty International has called for a comprehensive inquiry by the United Nations, by the Secretary General of the United Nations, into violations of international humanitarian law by both Hizbollah, and by Israel. Obviously the use of cluster bombs in heavily inhabited areas, with the consequences we've described - that is the bombs remaining effectively land mines and so on - amounts, in our view, to the use of an indiscriminate weapon. So this is one more reason why we think it is essential that a full investigation takes place into both sides," Cordone told Reuters in London.
    The Israeli military declined to provide a spokesperson to be interviewed on camera about the use of cluster munitions in Lebanon, but it did release a written statement.
    "All the weapons and munitions used by the IDF are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards," the statement reads.
    Ralph Steinhardt, a professor of human rights law at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. says that it's the use of the weapon in this case, not the weapon itself, which could possibly constitute a human rights violation.
    "It may well be that cluster bombs by themselves are not, per se, illegal. We do not have, and could not have an exhaustive list of all illegal weapons, but it's quite clear that even legal weapons can be used illegal if they are, used as it were disproportionally, or in a context where they could not discriminate between military and civilian targets," Steinhardt said, adding that Hizbollah's use of rockets might also be an example of the employment a weapon in a context that did not discriminate between military and civilian targets.
    And while the United Nations says some of the cluster munitions used by the Israeli army were made in the United States, Steinhardt says it's unlikely that the United States would be in legal jeopardy, if it were to be determined that a human rights violation had occurred with the Israeli use of the cluster munitions.
    "It's quite clear that countries and private actors might face liability if they provided illegal - inherently illegal weapons. On the other hand if you provided and sold legal weapons, but they were used in an illegal way, then the source, whether it was public or private, would not face liability as a general matter. Now that's a different question from whether they might face moral censure, or a kind of political backlash," Steinhardt told Reuters.
    The United Nations has said Israel was planning to turn over maps of where it dropped or fired the cluster bombs.
    An August 11th a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at ending the fighting called on Israel to turn over all maps it had of land mines in Lebanon.
    In the meantime however, as Lebanese attempt to return to their homes, and clear debris, bomblets remain in places like grazing fields, roads, and wherever else they may have landed during the conflict.
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