Thursday, June 5, 2008
Almost half of South now cleared of cluster bombs
Almost half the areas in South Lebanon contaminated with cluster bombs dropped by Israel in 2006 have been cleared, a UN official said on Wednesday. "Forty-three percent of the areas affected by cluster bombs dropped during the July 2006 war have been cleared," said Dalya Farran, spokeswoman for UN Mine Action Coordination Center for South Lebanon.
"Efforts are under way to clean 49 percent of the contaminated areas," she told AFP, adding that work had yet to begin in 8 percent of the affected areas.
She said 970 contaminated sites had been found in an area that spanned some 39 million square meters.
Since the war's end in August 2006, cluster bombs have caused "256 civilian casualties between deaths and injuries," added Farran.
She said that there have also been 51 casualties from the Lebanese Army and international forces in the area.
Farran added that Israel had to make known "the number of bombs that were dropped as well as their locations." (AFP)
Labels: Israel, Lebanon, U.N., Weapons Ban
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Experts see big holes in cluster bomb ban
An agreement banning cluster bombs has cheered human rights campaigners, but powerful military states are refusing to join it and experts say the treaty is riddled with holes that make it unworkable.
The agreement, to be formalized in Dublin on Thursday, commits 111 countries to banning cluster munitions -- "bomblets" that are scattered from planes or by artillery shells and that detonate like mines.
The campaign to ban them, like that against landmines a decade ago, has been impassioned. Opponents express outrage at the indiscriminate nature of the weapons, which often lie unexploded for months or years until accidentally trodden on. Children are frequently the victims.
But the United States, China and Russia have not joined the treaty, and while Britain and other NATO states have championed it, the deal has loopholes that would allow troops of a signatory state to benefit from an ally like Washington using the weapons.
"This is an absolutely rock-solid treaty that's going to outlaw a lethal munition," said Mark Garlasco, an analyst at Human Rights Watch, pleased with what he saw as the fruitful outcome of 10 days of talks in the Irish capital. (Reuters)
Labels: U.S., Weapons Ban
Treaty seeks to ban cluster bombs within 8 years
Diplomats from more than 100 nations agreed on a treaty Wednesday to ban current types of cluster bombs and require the destruction of stockpiles within eight years.
However, the talks did not involve the biggest makers and users of cluster bombs: the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. And the pact leaves the door open for new types that could pick targets more precisely and contain self-destruct technology.
Cluster munitions, fired by artillery or dropped from aircraft, scatter dozens or hundreds of "bomblets" across an area as big as two football fields to attack concentrations of troops and vehicles.
They have been used with devastating impact on battlefields around the globe. But critics complain the explosives often fail to detonate and later inflict a terrible cost on civilians, from farmers who strike bomblets in their fields to children who mistake them for playthings.
The breakthrough on a ban capped more than a year of negotiations begun in Norway and pressed home over the past 10 days in Dublin. Nations are expected to sign the document in December in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
Ireland and other lead sponsors plan to unveil the treaty Friday after it is translated into several languages. (AP)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Cluster bombs ban close after British move
Some 109 countries meeting in Dublin are close to agreeing a landmark convention to eliminate cluster bombs after Britain gave way and agreed Wednesday to withdraw them, the Irish foreign ministry said.
After 10 days of often tense debate, diplomats are close to agreeing on the text of a wide-ranging pact that would completely end the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions by its signatories.
Britain was widely cited by cluster bomb ban campaigners as being at the forefront of a group of states seeking to water down the treaty.
But in a dramatic move Wednesday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced in London that Britain would withdraw all its cluster bombs from service in a bid to break the deadlock in Dublin.
"We have decided we will take all our types of cluster bombs out of service," Brown said.
"I believe that is going to make a difference to the negotiations that are now taking place."
In fast-moving negotiations at Croke Park stadium in the Irish capital, officials put through amendments on a draft text, with sources saying a definitive agreement seemed close.
"At the moment we are in the process of agreeing the text," an Irish foreign ministry spokeswoman told AFP. (AFP)
Labels: U.K., Weapons Ban
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Activists see strong cluster bomb ban this week
Progress has been made towards agreeing a wide-ranging global ban on cluster munitions this week, though three of the most controversial issues are still unresolved, campaigners said on Monday.
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.
"There is no question that we will have a treaty adopted on Friday, that it will be adopted by either all or all but a very small number of the 110 states who are here negotiating," said Steve Goose of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
The biggest breakthrough has been securing medical and "socio-economic" support for victims, campaigners said.
Work on provisions related to the clearance of contaminated areas has also progressed well, they said.
Cluster munitions open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over wide areas. They often fail to explode, creating virtual mine fields that can kill or injure anyone who comes across them -- often curious children. (AFP)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Saturday, May 24, 2008
U.S. "bullying" hurts cluster bomb ban work: activists
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 jeopardize U.S. participation in joint peacekeeping and disaster relief operations by "criminalizing" 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. (Reuters)
Labels: U.S., Weapons Ban
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Military chiefs urge UK to ban cluster bombs
Some of the most senior British former generals and Nato commanders urged the government yesterday to agree to a total ban on cluster bombs, describing them as "inaccurate and unreliable".
Their call came as negotiations began in Dublin for an international treaty outlawing cluster munitions, which scatter large numbers of bomblets over a wide area. Many of these fail to explode at the time, only to kill and maim civilians, often long after the conflict has ended.
The call for a ban came from former defence chiefs including Field Marshal Lord Bramall; Major General Patrick Cordingley, commander of the Desert Rats during the first Gulf war; Sir Jack Deverell, former Nato commander; General Lord Ramsbotham, and two former Nato and UN commanders in the Balkans, General Sir Michael Rose and General Sir Rupert Smith. Ramsbotham said: "To continue using these weapons when other countries ban them could seriously impede our standing in the world."
The Ministry of Defence has agreed to abandon what it calls old "dumb" cluster munitions. But it want to keeps two newer types of cluster weapons, the M85, an Israeli-designed artillery weapon whose bomblets are designed to self-destruct, and the CRV7 weapon system used on British Apache helicopters. (Guardian)
Labels: U.K., Weapons Ban
Monday, May 19, 2008
Irish host gathering to ban cluster bombs
Envoys from around 100 countries are to gather in Dublin on Monday for a 12-day conference aimed at clinching an international treaty banning cluster munitions. The negotiations should hammer out a wide-ranging pact that would completely wipe out the use, production and stockpiling of cluster bombs by its signatories.
But notable absentees from the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions, which concludes on May 30, include China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the US: all major producers and stockpilers.
Following meetings in Lima, Vienna and Wellington, the Dublin gathering will thrash out a definitive agreement, to be signed in Oslo on December 2-3. Signatories would then need to ratify it.
The process, started by Norway in February 2007, has taken the same path as the landmark 1997 Ottawa Treaty ban on anti-personnel land mines: going outside the UN to avoid vetoes and seal a swift treaty.
Cluster munitions are among the weapons that pose the gravest dangers to civilians. (AFP)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Pope encourages conference on cluster bomb ban
Pope Benedict on Sunday said he hoped a Dublin conference on cluster bombs will outlaw the deadly weapons by agreeing on a strong international convention.
"I hope that, thanks to the responsibility of all the participants, a strong and credible international instrument can be achieved," he said after his noon prayer during a visit to the northwestern Italian city of Genoa.
Representatives of more than 100 nations gather in Dublin on Monday to finalize an anti-cluster munitions treaty.
Cluster munitions open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over wide areas. They often fail to explode, creating virtual mine fields that can kill or injure anyone who comes across them.
The U.N. Development Program says cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.
The world's top producers, users and stockpilers of cluster bombs -- the United States, Israel, China, Russia, India and Pakistan -- will skip the conference. But diplomats at the United Nations say Washington is encouraging allies to adopt positions that could lead to a watered-down treaty. (Reuters)
Labels: U.N., Vatican, Weapons Ban
Saturday, May 17, 2008
MoD lobbies to keep 'smart' cluster bombs
The British government is deeply divided over its policy on cluster bombs on the eve of international negotiations about a ban, the Guardian has learned.
The split sets the Ministry of Defence, which wants to retain two types of cluster munitions in the British armoury, against Downing Street and the Foreign Office, which want to honour Gordon Brown's pledge last year "to work internationally for a ban" on those weapons that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
An international conference on cluster munitions - shells or rockets which contain several smaller bombs - begins on Monday in Dublin. Officials said it was unlikely British divisions would be resolved by then. Instead, they hope the position taken by European allies could throw up a workable compromise.
Lord Malloch-Brown, the Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, told the Guardian: "There is an internal discussion going on in the UK as we try to maximize our offer for the [Dublin] negotiation." However, the former UN deputy secretary-general admitted being "uncomfortable" about a compromise that would leave some cluster bombs in the UK arsenal.
"The source of my discomfort is that I'm used to being able to get on my UN high horse and beat up countries about having clean, clear positions on this," said Malloch-Brown. "I'm now caught in the fact if you are a national government there are real issues you have to work through to get the best position you can."(Guardian)
Labels: U.K., U.N., Weapons Ban
Monday, May 5, 2008
The politics of cluster bombs
Nang Wan lies in a hospital bed in this remote area's provincial hospital, her body covered in small black wounds. The 35-year-old woman was digging a shallow drainage ditch around her house on April 16 when her world exploded.
Her youngest, five-year-old, son was killed instantly in the blast. Her other two young children are in the room across the hall, with shrapnel wounds to their bodies and faces. Their injuries are tragically common in this northern province of Laos, a legacy of the country's war with the United States.
During the US's so-called "Secret War" in Laos, which spanned from 1964-1973, the US military dropped more than 2.4 million tons of bombs on the country, including around 270 million cluster bomb sub-munitions. According to the government-run unexploded ordnance (UXO) disposal organization UXO-Lao, 4,837 people have been killed or injured by cluster munitions, many of them decades after the war's end.
The tragedy that continues in Laos has been repeated in countries across the globe, from the Western Sahara to Sudan, Chechnya to Lebanon. In each one of these conflicts the legacy is felt by the civilian population. Unexploded cluster munitions wait at or just below the surface of the ground to be stepped or hit with a shovel or plow. All of the munitions are unstable and become increasingly more so with time, often set off by the slightest movement or touch.
The brief 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon saw some of the most extensive use yet of cluster munitions, mostly by Israel, in highly populated areas. Civilian casualties caused by these weapons, both during the war and after, have refocused global attention on the weapons' most frequent users and producers, including in recent or ongoing conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. (Asia Times)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Israeli cluster bomb injures five boys in South
Labels: Israel, Lebanon, Weapons Ban
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Hague talks stress peril of non-state actors obtaining chemical weapons
The nightmare scenario of a mass-scale chemical attack by extremists and the panic which would ensue has created a new role for the body set up to rid the world of chemical weapons. Diplomats at the 10-day Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) review conference in The Hague over the weekend adopted a new target deadline of 2012 for 183 member states to destroy their stockpiles.
But while 12 countries have yet to sign up to the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention treaty or the mission's amended goals - including North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon and Syria - they also gave the OPCW an expanded mandate.
The new mission statement highlights the "increased danger of the use of chemical weapons by terrorists or other non-state actors" facing the international community.
Limiting the potential for rogue users - such as a Japanese sect behind the 1995 sarin gas attacks on commuters on the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 and left thousands with toxic injuries - is now a major concern. (AFP)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Death toll now 6 in attack that killed Reuters man
Two Palestinian teenagers died on Sunday of wounds sustained in an apparent Israeli attack that killed a Reuters cameraman in the Gaza Strip last week, raising the total death toll in the incident to six, medics said.
Hospital officials named the pair as Ahmed al-Najar, 17, and Bilal al-Dhaimi, 16. They were wounded when one or more missiles apparently fired by an Israeli tank sprayed cameraman Fadel Shana with tiny darts as he was filming on Wednesday.
Human rights activists and local residents have given the ages of three men and youths killed instantly alongside Shana as between 13 and 22.
Reuters has demanded an urgent inquiry from the Israeli military which has expressed regret but has not yet confirmed that its tank, seen firing in the final seconds of Shana's surviving video, delivered the fatal round or rounds.
Shana's body armour, which bore a blue-on-white "PRESS" marking, was ripped off by the attack, which medical examination showed had thrust several 1.5-inch (38-mm) metal darts through his neck, shredding his flesh and severing his spine. (Reuters)
Labels: Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Weapons Ban
Friday, April 11, 2008
US 'sabotaging' cluster-bomb treaty
A leading group working on behalf of disabled people has accused the United States of pressuring European and African countries not to join a new treaty next month banning cluster bombs. "Five weeks before the conclusion of the historic Cluster Munition Treaty, Handicap International urges states to resist the growing pressure from the US and other arms-producing countries," the group said in a statement on Wednesday.
Cluster bombs are notorious for killing and maiming civilians. They contain smaller bomblets, which scatter over a wide area and can explode decades after a conflict has ended.
The treaty banning the weapons is expected to be published in Dublin during an event involving almost 100 countries from May 19 to 30.
"We got evidence from a number of states they have been lobbied, sometimes very aggressively, by the US," said Stan Brabant, head of the non-governmental organization's Belgian section. He said African states had been threatened with losing aid from the United States if they signed up. He also accused Britain and the Netherlands of trying to weaken treaty provisions on helping the victims of such weapons. (AFP)
Labels: U.S., Weapons Ban
Friday, February 22, 2008
Talks on cluster bomb ban fail (Al Jazeera)
Delegates from more than 120 countries have failed to reach an agreement on banning the use of cluster bombs during a five-day conference in Wellington, New Zealand.
John Duncan, the UK's chief negotiator, said on Friday that "intense negotiations" would be needed at a final round of talks in May if a treaty is to be established.
China, Russia and the US, all manufacturers of the weapons, are not attending.
The talks are part of a Norwegian initiative - known as the Oslo process - launched in February last year. (Link)
Labels: Weapons Ban
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
US Accused of Stalling Weapons Talks (AP)
Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams accused the United States on Wednesday of trying to stall negotiations on an international agreement to ban cluster bombs - without even attending talks on the treaty.
Delegates from more than 120 countries are negotiating a convention in New Zealand that would ban the use, production, trade and storage of cluster bombs that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
The talks, first launched by Austria, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Peru and the Vatican last year, aim to define which cluster bomb weapons are acceptable and which should be banned.
Williams, a U.S. citizen, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on the international convention that outlawed land mines. Washington is not a signatory to the land mine convention, but no longer uses the weapons.
Williams, a delegate to the cluster bomb talks, said the United States was seeking exemptions from the treaty for many cluster weapons, a 10-year delay to any treaty coming into force, and the right for non-cluster munition states to work in coalition with cluster bomb users. (Link)
Labels: U.S., Weapons Ban
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
HRW: Flooding South Lebanon
Labels: Hezbollah, Human Rights Watch, Israel, Lebanon, Weapons Ban
Monday, February 18, 2008
Israel's use of so many cluster munitions 'shocking' Children, agricultural workers face serious threat (Daily Star)
Editor's note: The following is the second section of a report issued by Human Rights Watch on Sunday, entitled "Flooding South Lebanon: Israel's Use of Cluster Munitions in Lebanon in July and August 2006." The Daily Star published the first portion of the report on Monday and will publish the final portion on Wednesday.
Israel used only limited numbers of its new Trajectory Correction System MLRS rockets with M85 submunitions. Israeli soldiers told Human Rights Watch that the Israeli military fired a total of 130 TCS rockets and used them exclusively in the earlier stages of the conflict. An Israeli military reserve officer told a reporter that his battalion used only a small number of RAMAM rockets (the Hebrew acronym for TCS) and just in the first days of the war.
The control unit for TCS, inside an armored vehicle, required level ground for proper guidance operation. TCS fire missions involved shooting one to three rockets at a target, in contrast to the mass firing of M26 rockets in later weeks.
Soldiers in the battalion received little, but contradictory, feedback on the performance of TCS. (Link)
Labels: Human Rights Watch, Lebanon, Weapons Ban
Cluster bomb ban talks open in NZ (Al Jazeera)
Delegates from more than 120 countries have begun a meeting in New Zealand aimed at drawing up a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs.
The five-day conference in Wellington is one of a series held as part of a Norwegian initiative launched in February last year.
The process is set to culminate with the adoption of a treaty at a meeting in Dublin in May.
Cluster munitions contain small so-called "bomblets" which scatter over a wide area and which sometimes explode only decades after a conflict has ended, killing and maiming civilians.
They are built to explode above the ground, releasing thousands of bomblets intended to detonate on impact.
But a series of studies have shown that as many as 40 per cent of the bomblets fail to go off immediately and instead only go off much later when disturbed by civilians.
For example, according to conference organisers, Israel's use of cluster bombs during the 2006 war in Lebanon led to more than 200 civilian casualties in the 12 months following the ceasefire. (Link)
Labels: Israel, Lebanon, Weapons Ban
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