No more cluster bombs, alas

According to the International Herald Tribune: Ireland convened diplomats from more than 100 nations Monday in hopes of negotiating a treaty banning cluster bombs, which have littered battlefields worldwide with potentially deadly "duds."
Each bomb, rocket or shell scatters "bomblets" that carpet enemy troops or armored vehicles. But some fail to detonate, creating unmapped minefields that kill or maim civilians — including children who can mistake the objects for toys — months or years later.
The negotiations, begun in Norway last year, seek to impose maximum restrictions on cluster bomb manufacturing, sales and storage. But myriad arguments loom over defining what a cluster bomb is, and whether to exempt the most technologically reliable or precise systems.
If participants achieve a draft treaty in Dublin during the coming 12 days of negotiations, a formal signing ceremony would follow in Norway in December.
These talks are being pursued outside the auspices of the United Nations. The three biggest producers of cluster bombs — the U.S., Russia and China — oppose ban proposals, wield vetoes on the U.N. Security Council, and are not represented in Dublin.
But U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the diplomats' breakaway effort in a videotaped message inside Ireland's largest sports stadium, Croke Park, the negotiating venue.
Irish and Norwegian ministers said a treaty would put pressure on leading cluster bomb manufacturers. They said this is what happened when most countries — but not the big three powers — backed a land mine ban in 1997.
"Our experience with the land mine treaty was that, even though certain countries refused to sign it, they behaved as though they had signed it," Norwegian Deputy Defense Minister Espen Barth Eide said.
Eide said a treaty banning cluster bombs would isolate leading producers and spur them to develop weapons "that detonate where they should and when they should."
The U.S. emphasizes that its defense industry is attempting to do exactly that, developing "bomblets" that each contain internal targeting systems.
The State Department said last month it would not attend the Dublin conference, preferring sporadic U.N.-organized talks in Geneva that seek nonbinding rules for using cluster bombs and cleaning up their consequences.
Other major makers of cluster bombs — Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan — also avoided the talks.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said he was confident that any treaty agreement would "create its own momentum" and discourage non-signatory nations from promoting the weapons.
Diplomats from several cluster bomb-making nations in Europe, East Asia and South America came to the Dublin talks seeking exemptions for at least some of their own weapons systems.
Britain seeks permission to keep using two of its systems: an artillery-fired shell containing 49 bomblets, and a helicopter-fired rocket containing nine each.
Those seeking exemptions argue that the most modern "bomblets," if they fail to detonate, also contain self-destruct systems designed to eliminate the long-term risk to civilians.
Most countries want a full ban. Pope Benedict XVI backed that call Sunday.
So did nine British generals in a letter published Monday in The Times newspaper of London. The signatories included former field commanders in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
"Cluster munitions were developed to combat a level of Cold War confrontation that never happened," the generals wrote. "However, in modern wars, conducted among the people, they have consistently caused civilian casualties both during and after attacks."