Welcome U-Turn on Cluster Bombs

Perhaps the change came because most countries at the Oslo conference were clearly going to vote in favour of the push to ban cluster bombs. Maybe it was the sudden burst of offers to host follow-up conferences, or maybe even the presence of TV cameras, radio and newspapers from around the world.

Whatever the reason, the process was emboldened Friday by the unexpected support of Germany, Canada, Italy and Britain, several important countries that had been dragging their feet only Thursday, the first day of the two-day conference.

On Thursday these producers of cluster bombs had indicated or declared their preference for negotiations at the largely inefficient Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) meetings at the United Nations in Geneva.

{josquote}Suggestions to even begin talks on cluster bombs were torpedoed at the CCW last November by veto-wielding producers or users such as the United States, China and Russia, prompting Norway to announce the two-day conference that wound up Friday{/josquote}.

The four stragglers and several others surprised many by deciding to come out in support of the final declaration of the conference after all.

"I didn't expect them to get on board at such an early stage, I think it's partly due to nervousness of being left behind when the train leaves the station. Brilliant," Simon Conway, director of the NGO Landmine Action told IPS.

In the end only Japan, Romania and Poland refused to support the declaration, referring instead to the CCW.

The straggler states emphasised that the declaration is an "aspiration" rather than legally binding. But the declaration voices support for the process and outlines several steps ahead.

Most important is the aim to achieve a legally binding ban by 2008, although even Norway's foreign minister Jonas Gahr Støre admitted to IPS that such a short time-frame is an "ambitious" goal.

A framework for caring for victims and their families as well as the clearance of unexploded cluster bombs, the provision of risk education and a commitment to destroying stockpiles is mentioned.

The declaration states that there should be a prohibition on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs that "cause unacceptable harm to civilians", meaning that some types could be banned and others not.

Several states lamented that the declaration did not mention the CCW, but supported it anyway.

A clause added at the last minute stating that negotiations should continue in "all relevant for a", implicitly including the CCW, presumably contributed to the near total consensus.

"I think it was very skilful of Norway to present their initiative as complementary to the CCW and not as a competitor," chief executive officer Dr. Jean Baptiste Richardier of the NGO Handicap International France told IPS.

"Norway didn't compromise the final declaration in any way. Their resistance was excellent, because a blind pandering to the CCW would probably have been the best way to minimise the end result," he said.

Further strengthening the initiative were pledges from Ireland and Peru to host international follow-up conferences, and from Belgium and Costa Rica to hold regional conferences.

On Thursday Austria was the first to offer to host a follow-up meeting, which will be held in November or December. Ireland will host a meeting in early 2008. Peru pledged to hold a three-day meeting in Lima as early as May 23.

"Now everyone is under pressure to demonstrate that the Oslo process can achieve something before the next CCW meeting in November," Richardier told IPS.

That was certainly the hope of Lebanon, which has suffered many civilian casualties from cluster bombs during and after the Israeli attacks in 2006.

''For our part time is of the essence given the huge amount of cluster bombs on Lebanese territory. Hopefully good sense will prevail on the usual politics,'' Gebran Soufan, Lebanese ambassador and permanent representative to the UN in Geneva told IPS.

Mohamad Shakib Nahlé, a Lebanese painter and father of seven who lost his leg in an Israeli cluster bomb strike on an ambulance, could not agree more.

"The process has started. Now all governments must be convinced that this is a humanitarian cause, not a military one," he told IPS.

According to the NGO Handicap International, 98 percent of cluster bomb casualties are civilians.

At the conference Austria and Bosnia Herzegovina announced moratoriums on the use of their cluster bombs. Norway announced a moratorium last November. Belgium became the first country in the world to ban cluster bombs in June 2006. (END/IPS/EU/WD/IP/HD/TO/SS/07)

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency

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