VARIOUS: Representatives of almost 50 governments met in Norway to lay the groundwork for a new international pact to ban cluster bombs

Record ID: 357129

  • Title: VARIOUS: Representatives of almost 50 governments met in Norway to lay the groundwork for a new international pact to ban cluster bombs
  • Date: 23rd February 2007
  • Summary: (EU) OSLO, NORWAY (FEBRUARY 22, 2007) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR - PEOPLE WALKING INTO CONFERENCE CENTRE IN THE SNOW/ NORWEGIAN FLAG FLYING (9 SECONDS) PARTICIPANTS SITTING IN CONFERENCE HALL
  • Embargoed: 10th March 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA67BLMX7IALUEDXL81OUGPH0II
  • Story Text: A decade after the Ottawa treaty that banned landmines, almost 50 governments met in the Norwegian capital on Thursday (February 22) to lay the groundwork for a new international pact to ban cluster bombs.
    Cluster munitions, which have been used in conflicts around the world from Vietnam to Iraq, are blamed by activists and some governments for killing and maiming thousands of civilians, many of them children, and sowing horror decades after their use.
    "So time has come to agree that these weapons that cause such indiscriminate human suffering should not longer be used. Time has come to agree that we need a new international instrument to ban cluster munitions that have unacceptable humanitarian consequences," Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told the conference.
    Stoere added: "The weapons that we are here to discuss are indiscriminate area weapons. They cause damage that is disproportionate to their potential military effects. They do not distinguish between civilian and military targets".
    The effort to ban cluster bombs echoes the campaign that led to the 1997 Ottawa treaty that banned anti-personnel landmines and which has been signed by 155 nations.
    "If you look at it on its merits, I see actually no reason why countries who have signed on to that treaty should not sign on to this. Because what we are talking about here is actually the anti personnel mines all over again, Cluster bombs unexploded in southern Lebanon, in Afghanistan, Serbia, Africa, South East Asia, they are landmines and if we are set on to do something about the landmines we also need to address this issue" Stoere told Reuters on the sidelines of the onference.
    Cluster bombs comprise a range of munitions that can be dropped from aircraft or fired in artillery shells or rockets. They contain up to hundreds of submunitions that spread out to saturate wide areas, kill enemy soldiers and pierce armour. The bomblets sometimes fail to explode during combat and can pose dangers to civilians for decades after a conflict.
    Austria's Ambassador to the U.N. organisations in Geneva, Wolfgang Petritsch, told Reuters after the opening of the conference,
    "The Austrian government officially decided that in its meeting of the council of ministers and supported by the president that we will have a unilateral moratorium on cluster munitions until there is a international enforceable treaty in place."
    Norway already has a moratorium in place, and Belgium banned cluster munitions last year.
    The use of cluster munitions by Israel in southern Lebanon last year and by Hezbollah guerillas in that same conflict heightened public awareness about the weapon.
    A ban has been resisted by munitions producing countries, including the United States, Russia and China.
    Among the participants at the conference was also one of the thousands of cluster munition victims, Branislav Kapeta Novic, who used to be in the Serbian army working as a de-miner. In 2000 he was crippled by a cluster bomb:
    "I got injured on the ninth of November 2000, one and a half year after bombing of Serbia. I was working as a de-miner, with cluster bombs as my speciality . That day I lost all four of my limbs and also my hearing in both ears and my sight is very damaged also," Novic told Reuters Television.
    "I truly hope, since lots of countries are here and allot of us are here to speak up, that it will result in that cluster bombs will be banned,"he added.
    Norway took the lead on cluster munitions and invited a few dozen interested governments to Oslo to discuss a ban after the U.N. Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) failed in November to agree to start negotiations towards a ban which is hoped to be achieved during 2008.
    cr/jrc
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