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Germany to ratify cluster bomb treaty, as Berlin talks begin
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 25 - 06 - 2009


Germany is to ratify the Convention on Cluster
Munitions in the coming days, German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler told an international cluster bomb meeting in Berlin today, dpa reported.
The two-day talks, hosted by the German Foreign Office, bring
together 270 participants from 75 countries to discuss ways of
destroying military stockpiles of cluster munitions.
So far, ten of the 98 signatory countries have ratified the
convention, which prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and
transfer of cluster bombs.
Cluster weapons - criticized for carrying a high risk of maiming
or killing civilians - can be launched from the air or via artillery
shells and can disperse hundreds of bomblets over a target area.
Children are often victims of the weapons, which can remain lodged
in the ground for years after being fired, since they sometimes
mistake the so-called bomblets for toys.
Signatory states have eight years to destroy military stockpiles
of cluster weapons, once the convention comes into effect six months
after it has been ratified by thirty states.
Espen Eide, the Deputy Minister of Defence for Norway, said the
Berlin conference would maintain the momentum of the treaty drawn up
in Oslo last December, as well as providing a forum to discuss ways
of destroying cluster bombs.
Eide said they had drawn lessons from the landmine treaty, which
was not initially implemented by all the states which had signed it.
For this reason he welcomed the fact that Germany was hosting the
talks before the ban was in place.
Unlike landmines, the Norwegian minister said the ban on cluster
bombs could take effect before the problem became too widespread.
"We saw a catastrophe in the making before it was really a global
catastrophe," Eide told German Press Agency dpa.
While the destruction of current stockpiles is an important goal,
it is arguably far more urgent to remove cluster munitions from
former conflict zones.
One of the countries worst affected by cluster bombs is Laos,
where the deadly munitions are embedded in the land as a legacy of
the Vietnam War.
Deputy Foreign Minister of Laos Bounkeut Sangsomsak said they
hoped to host a conference next year to address ways of clearing land
of cluster bombs.
This would also provide an opportunity for an international
delegation to view first-hand the damage caused by the weapon,
Sangsomsak added.


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