Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 9:40 pm Post subject: At last! Some GOOD news about cluster bombs... |
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Imagine your child is out and about playing with his friends, and unwittingly steps on this:
How horrible that so many children have done such a thing, and yet it has taken us so long to get to this:
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The government is preparing to scrap Britain's entire arsenal of cluster bombs in the face of a growing clamour against weapons that have killed and maimed hundreds of innocent civilians.
Officials are paving the way for the unexpected and radical step at talks in Dublin on an international treaty aimed at a worldwide ban on the bombs.
Well-placed sources made clear yesterday that despite opposition from the military, the government is prepared to get rid of the cluster munitions in Britain's armoury: the lsraeli-designed M85 artillery weapon used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in attacks on Lebanon two years ago; and the M73, part of a weapons system for Apache helicopters.
"The prime minister is very much behind this process and wants us to sign [the treaty]", a senior Foreign Office source said yesterday.
Ireland, which is chairing the talks, wants a treaty text to be adopted tonight. "If we sign up to the treaty we will lose the M85 and the M73", the source said. While the government appears happy for British forces to get rid of their M85 weapons immediately, it wants a "phasing out period" for its M73s.
The agreement, expected to be confirmed today, ends a long-running Whitehall dispute which has pitted the Ministry of Defence against the FO and Department for International Development. The MoD says the number of cluster bombs in the armoury is "operationally sensitive" but concedes that decommissioning them will cost tens of millions of pounds.
Participants in the talks were still embroiled last night in the vexed question of whether troops from countries who sign up to the ban could go on operations with those, notably the US, that do not. Preventing them from doing so could lead to breaches in other treaty commitments, notably involving Nato, and would have serious practical implications, British officials say. The government also wants to allow the US to stockpile cluster weapons at American bases in the UK.
Pressure would be applied on the US not to use its cluster weapons in joint operations with countries which had banned them, officials suggest.
Cluster weapons are highly controversial because they scatter small "bomblets" over a wide area. Many of them do not explode on impact and are activated later by civilians. They caused more than 200 civilian casualties in the year after the Lebanon ceasefire, and more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/28/military.defence |
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