U.S. Congress Passes Cluster Bomb Export Moratorium

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Congress today will effectively ban the export of US cluster munitions during 2008. Cluster munitions have caused thousands of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, Iraq, Laos, Lebanon and Kosovo in recent years. The ban is included in the FY 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Act that Congress is expected to send to the president late Wednesday. President Bush will likely sign before Christmas.

"An export moratorium is a good first step," said Lora Lumpe, coordinator of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines and a lobbyist at the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers). "We will work in the coming year to make the export ban permanent and to prohibit the US military's use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians."

Passage of the export ban comes just two weeks after 138 governments gathered in Vienna, Austria to hammer out a global treaty that will ban production, stockpiling, export and use of cluster munitions. The US government is not taking part in these negotiations, which will be completed in 2008.

Cluster bombs cause high civilian casualty rates because they disperse many smaller submunitions over a wide area. Many of those small "bomblets" fail to explode and become de facto landmines.

The United States is the world's leading arms exporter, and it has exported cluster munitions to 28 countries --- including Egypt, Indonesia, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. Israel used US-supplied cluster munitions extensively last year in southern Lebanon. Unexploded cluster submunition duds there have claimed more than 200 civilian casualties.

The Omnibus Appropriations Act contains specific language prohibiting any arms export license or the provision of any military aid for cluster munitions during FY 2008 unless the weapons have a 99 percent or higher tested reliability rate --- meaning that use of the weapons would not result in a deadly minefield of dud cluster submunitions. In addition, the bill would require the importer to sign a statement before export could take place, agreeing that they will not use cluster munitions in civilian areas.

The US military has a stockpile of nearly 1 billion cluster submunitions, almost all of which have extremely high unreliability rates. The USCBL in the coming year will be pressing for passage of a separate piece of legislation, the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act (S. 594, H.R. 1755), which would extend the restriction on cluster bomb exports indefinitely, and would place the same reliability restrictions on the US military's use of cluster bombs. More information:

http://www.fcnl.org/press/releases/clusteruscbl121907.htm

The USCBL is a coalition of US-based human rights, humanitarian, faith-based, children's, peace, disability, veterans', medical, development, academic, and environmental organizations (http://www.uscbl.org/). Participating organizations include Handicap International, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Christian aid group World Vision, Human Rights Watch, and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,245558.shtml

[bemildred]

1. Congress Takes Action on Cluster Bombs, Child Soldiers

WASHINGTON — Human-rights and humanitarian groups are hailing provisions of a major appropriations bill approved by Congress this week that bans the export of most U.S.-made cluster bombs and U.S. military aid for foreign governments that use child soldiers.The two provisions — which were tucked into a mammoth 560-billion-dollar 2008 omnibus spending bill — marked important victories for the groups, which have made both issues a major legislative priority.

On child soldiers, the bill provides that no military aid can be provided to governments whose “…armed forces or government supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces… recruit or use child soldiers.”

Governments that could be denied aid under the bill include Colombia — which receives several hundred million dollars’ worth of U.S. military aid each year — Chad, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda, all of which have been accused by the most recent State Department annual human rights Country Reports of recruiting children as soldiers.

As for cluster bombs, the bill bans their transfer to any foreign nation unless they have at least a 99-percent reliability rate and the importing country has pledged in writing that it will not use the weapon in civilian areas.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/22/5965/