THE STORY was told in two quite different ways in the international press. US readers heard that on Friday US-led efforts to conclude a treaty restricting the use of cluster munitions failed at UN talks involving 114 countries in Geneva. "The draft treaty was vigorously promoted by the US and had the backing of other major users and producers, including China, India, Israel and Russia," the New York Timesreported.
“It reflected the increasing stigmatisation of a weapon recognised as causing unacceptable harm to civilians and seen as having lasting effects on development for decades after conflicts have ended,” the paper said.
Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area and because they often fail to explode initially remain a deadly indiscriminate hazard for many years.
So, worthy work indeed, one might have thought. And from such paragons of the arms control movement! How come then that, according to headlines on this side of the Atlantic, “Small countries block US bid to legalise cluster bombs”? In truth, US efforts were opposed by an impressive alliance led by Norway, Mexico and Austria, that included the International Committee of the Red Cross, top UN officials for human rights, emergency relief and development, and 50 states from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe, Ireland included, including many signatories to the 2008 Oslo Convention.
The Oslo agreement, signed by 111 states, not including the US, Russia and China, imposes a comprehensive ban on the use, production, stockpiling and sale of cluster munitions. Unfortunately 85-90 per cent of cluster munition stockpiles remain in countries that are not parties to it and have no intention of joining.
The US still regards such weapons as important battlefied tools against advancing armies spread over a wide area, and was proposing simply to regulate some cluster bomb use under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons by banning those manufactured before 1980 and requiring new munitions to have a failure rate of no more than 1 per cent by 2018.
Opponents rightly say that, anyway, most cluster bombs produced before 1980 are unusable, and that modern cluster munitions have failure rates much higher than the manufacturers claim. They insist that the net effect of the US proposal would not have been to restrict cluster bomb use, but rather to give some future legal cover to their use by the minority still refusing to sign the convention. That way does not lie arms control.