Nations sign cluster-bomb ban,US and Russia refuse

[Americanhero1]

OSLO, Norway – Scores of nations began signing a treaty banning cluster bombs Wednesday in a move that supporters hope will shame the U.S., Russia and China and other non-signers into abandoning weapons blamed for maiming and killing civilians.

Norway, which began the drive to ban cluster bombs 18 months ago, was the first to sign, followed by Laos and Lebanon, both hard-hit by the weapons.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere said he expected about 100 of the world's 192 U.N. member nations to sign by the end of the conference on Thursday. He said 125 countries were represented, but not all would sign.

Cluster bomblets are packed by the hundreds into artillery shells, bombs or missiles that scatter them over vast areas. Some fail to explode immediately. The unexploded bomblets can then lie dormant for years until they are disturbed, often by children attracted by their small size and bright colors.

"Banning cluster bombs took too long. Too many people lost arms and legs," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said as he opened the conference. Stoltenberg said he lived in Yugoslavia as a child, when his father was stationed there as a diplomat.

Thirty years later, after the Balkan wars of the 1990s, "the villages I remember from my childhood where children lived and played became littered with cluster munitions," Stoltenberg said.

Washington, Moscow and other non-signers say cluster bombs have legitimate military uses such as repelling advancing troop columns. But according to the group Handicap International, 98 percent of cluster-bomb victims are civilians, and 27 percent are children.

The Bush administration has said that a comprehensive ban would hurt world security and endanger U.S. military cooperation on humanitarian work with countries that sign the accord.

"The cluster bomb treaty will save countless lives by stigmatizing a weapon that kills civilians even after the fighting ends," said Steve Goose, arms director of Human Rights Watch. "President-elect Barack Obama should make joining the cluster ban treaty a top priority."

In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said his government had decided not to join the treaty, and instead believes the issue of cluster bomb use should be addressed through the U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons.

"We're not participating in the Norwegian track because we don't think it can lead to any serious credible result," Palmor said.

Thomas Nash, coordinator of The Cluster Bomb Coalition, which helped develop the treaty, noted that 18 of 26 NATO countries are signing it including Britain, which is already destroying its stockpiles of what he called "Cold War weapons."

Activists said ahead of the signing that they hope the treaty will pressure non-signers into shelving the weapons, as many did with land mines after a 1997 treaty banning them.

The anti-cluster bomb campaign gathered momentum after Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah in 2006, when it scattered up to 4 million bomblets across Lebanon, according to U.N. figures.

"In southern Lebanon, for more than two years, children and the elderly have been victimized (by cluster munitions)," Lebanese Foreign Minister Fawzi Saloukh said.

Norway called a conference to ban cluster bombs in February 2007. In May, more than 100 countries agreed to ban cluster bombs within eight years.

The treaty must be ratified by 30 countries before it takes effect.

Yugoslav Army de-miner Branislav Kapetanovich was working to clear an area of undetonated NATO cluster bombs in 2000 when an explosion cost him his arms and legs.

"For us here, this is not the end of the road. We will have to make sure the treaty is implemented and monitored," said Kapetanovich, now working as a spokesman for the Cluster Munitions Coalition.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081203/ap_on_re_eu/eu_norway_cluster_bombs