US should ban bomblets and get on the right side of history

US policymakers should put their weight behind banning cluster bombs rather than being apologists for them.

from the July 30, 2007 edition

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While they recognize the danger of these weapons, US policymakers are increasingly apologists for them. At the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva last month, Bush administration officials said that the threat to civilians from cluster munitions is "episodic" and "manageable within current response mechanisms" – presumably unless you're a child attracted by the bomblets. They said it "only" took two years to clear the high-risk affected areas in Kosovo after 1999, but also admitted that eight years later, unexploded bomblets remain. They cited 10 countries threatened by cluster bombs – Afghanistan, Albania, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon, Montenegro, Serbia, and Vietnam – as well as Kosovo, leaving out another 20 countries so affected.

Separately, the US State Department has said that Israel may have illegally used US-made cluster bombs in Lebanon, but welcomes that it will take "only" a year and a half to largely clean up the remnants. The Bush administration urged the convention to consider voluntary pledges by warring parties to use fewer cluster munitions, to increase reliability of bomblets, and to educate civilians about the risks.

But there's a much easier solution: Ban these killers. Already some 70 countries have come together in Oslo and Lima, Peru, to set the framework for a treaty to ban new cluster bombs, destroy stockpiles, clear contaminated areas, and assist accident victims. A treaty text has been drafted, and new negotiations are set for Vienna in December, and Wellington, New Zealand, and Dublin, Ireland, in the first half of 2008.

In the US, senators led by Dianne Feinstein and land-mine ban hero Patrick Leahy have introduced legislation banning the use, sale, and transfer of cluster munitions that have a failure rate higher than 1 percent, and banning the use of cluster munitions in heavily populated areas.

There's still time for President Bush to get on the right side of history by having his administration engage actively in the Oslo Treaty process and support US legislation to restrict or eliminate these weapons. Hopefully, when history repeats itself and governments and activists are celebrating the adoption of a treaty to eliminate cluster munitions, we will be among those toasting.

Donald Steinberg is the vice president for multilateral affairs at the International Crisis Group and former US ambassador to Angola.

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