27 May 2008

U.S. Urges Technological Advancements for Cluster Munitions

Envoy says Dublin conference could hinder humanitarian aid

By Michael G. Buchanan
Staff Writer

Washington -- Specific goals of the Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions are unproductive, says Ambassador Stephen Mull, as the United States seeks to work with international partners to eradicate a full range of unexploded munitions left behind in the world’s conflict zones.

Since 1993, the United States has spent more than $1.2 billion on cleanup programs, supporting land mine and cluster munitions removal projects wherever they pose a danger to civilians.  “It's an absolute moral obligation to clean up -- to do everything that you can to clean up after a conflict zone to make sure that there aren't innocent victims after the conflict,” Mull, acting assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said at a May 21 briefing.

Cluster munitions, also known as cluster bombs or "dumb bombs," are air-dropped or ground-launched munitions that eject a number of smaller submunitions sometimes called "bomblets" because of their size.  The most common types are intended to kill unprotected enemy soldiers and destroy military vehicles.

Fifty-two countries have benefited from U.S. conventional-weapons destruction assistance since 1993, but only 10 areas feature any threat from cluster munitions.  Of the 15,000 casualties from unexploded ordnance over that period, fewer than 5 percent were caused by cluster munitions, Mull said.  “The humanitarian issues brought on by cluster munitions are really a small part of a much larger problem that we think the whole world needs to work on together,” he says.

A TECHNOLOGICAL SOLUTION

According to Mull, important international dialogue is taking place within the framework of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) by a group including all major military powers and military equipment exporters.  “We worked very energetically and succeeded in getting agreement from everybody in the body for a mandate to negotiate a new protocol to regulate the use of cluster munitions to address the humanitarian issues that are involved with them,” he said.

A U.S. law already is providing a model for this expected protocol, emphasizing technological solutions to make post-conflict zones safer for civilians.  Part of the U.S. Foreign Operations Act, passed in December 2007, forbids the export of weapons that are less than 99 percent reliable.  This has forced manufacturers to redesign weapons to lessen the chance that unexploded ordnance could make areas unsafe.  “Rather than ban them, we think a much more effective way to go about this is to pursue technological fixes that will make sure that these weapons are no longer viable once the conflict is over,” Mull said.

THE DUBLIN TALKS

Other nations share the U.S. commitment to alleviating suffering from unexploded munitions, Mull said, but there is some conflict about how best to approach the problem.  The Dublin Diplomatic Conference on Cluster Munitions, in Dublin, Ireland, May 19-30, attempts to ban the development, distribution and use of the weapons.

But aspects of the Dublin conference, especially its criminalization of certain types of military actions, could have unintended consequences for the designers of the agreement, Mull said.  “For example, if the convention passes in its current form, any U.S. military ship would be technically not able to get involved in a peacekeeping operation, in providing disaster relief or humanitarian assistance as we're doing right now in the aftermath of the earthquake in China and the [cyclone] in Burma, and not to mention everything that we did in Southwest Asia after the tsunami in December of 2004.”

According to Richard Kidd, director of the State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, about half of the world’s peacekeeping troops are from nations outside of the Dublin agreement, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, whose support for international security could be jeopardized by the provisions of the pending agreement.

While saying that the United States respected the rights of every nation to make its own decision, Mull extended an invitation to the world community:  “We do hope to get all of our friends and allies, including those in the Oslo process, to get involved with us at the next CCW meeting in July and work in a serious forum where we can come up with a new approach to addressing the humanitarian dimensions in a realistic and an effective way of these cluster munitions.”

A transcript of Mull's briefing is available on America.gov.