A ‘sleeping killer’ or a cluster bomblet, waiting for an innocent victim

GENEVA, November 28 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Representatives of 92 countries Friday, November 28, adopted a protocol aimed at forcing governments to clear up unexploded weapons left behind after conflicts around the world, according to diplomats.

The protocol on "explosive remnants of war", which have been dubbed "sleeping killers", is due to come into effect once at least 20 countries have ratified it, they added, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

It sets out an international obligation for governments to clear up unexploded bombs, shells, missiles, grenades and other munitions, which kill several thousand people, mainly civilians, long after wars have ended, according to aid agencies.

In a message to the negotiators who met in Geneva this week, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan described the leftovers of war as "sleeping killers which continue to threaten men and women in fields and children at play, endanger the lives of aid workers and hold back reconstruction and development".

The protocol extending the U.N. Convention on Conventional Weapons marks the first time a legally-binding treaty on disarmament has been adopted at the United Nations since curbs on anti-personnel landmines were approved in 1996.

The new text notably covers cluster bombs, which have been used increasingly by the United States in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq to the dismay of disarmament campaigners and aid agencies.

Cluster bombs, which the U.S. unleashed in great numbers in Iraq and Afghanistan, are designed to scatter smaller explosive charges which, in theory, detonate when they hit their target, causing horrific injuries.

Paul Vermeulen, director of the campaign group Handicap International in Switzerland, said Thursday tens of millions of unexploded munitions were thought to be scattered across 82 countries.

The Convention on Conventional Weapons already sets out restrictions on the use of landmines, incendiary bombs such as napalm, and on blinding laser weapons.

On Thursday, hopes rose that nearly 100 nations, including the United States, would agree on the global treaty.

The 92 signatories to the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons were expected to approve the binding protocol on so-called Explosive Remnants of War, after two years of study and 12 months of negotiations.

"It is the first international treaty which requires to clear all unexploded weapons that pose a threat to civilians when the war is over," said India's ambassador for disarmament, Rakesh Sood, who presided over the talks.

An Afghani victim of U.S. ‘cluster bombs’

"With this protocol, states will have a responsibility to clear or assist in such clearance. It will no longer be possible for parties to a conflict to just walk away," he told a news conference in Geneva.

"It's a divine surprise," said one Western diplomat, noting that Washington had earlier opposed the idea of a compulsory treaty.

In France and Belgium explosives from World War I were still being discovered almost every week and the problem was particularly severe in southeast Asian countries like Laos and Cambodia which were attacked by the United States in the 1970s.

"In Cambodia, for every mine found there are nine more unexploded," Vermeulen said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which was the initiator of the discussions on unexploded ordnance in 2000, has earlier reacted favorably to the news of an imminent agreement on a new protocol.

"In the countries where we have a presence, we are going to have legal means to approach the authorities and ask them to work together with us," Dominique Loye, a technical advisor in the ICRC's mines and arms unit, told AFP, adding that the protocol responded "to a great extent" to anxieties about such weapons.

The response was more circumspect from Handicap International, which was one of 80 non-governmental organizations that earlier this month launched a global campaign to ban cluster bombs "until their humanitarian problems have been resolved".

Vermeulen said the treaty was "far too feeble" and contained "too many formulas which enable states to take decisions to suit them".

The text does not commit states to paying for the damage they cause. It simply invites aggressors to record the sites they attack to enable an exchange of information following a conflict.

As for ongoing conflicts, the protocol would "not immediately reduce the impact of war", Vermeulen said.