Red Cross, Mines Action Canada call for immediate moratorium on cluster bombs

The Chronicle West End Edition
November 5th 2007

A Cluster Bomb Unit containing more than 600 cluster bombs that was dropped by Israeli warplanes during the 34-day long Hezbollah-Israeli war, sits in a field in the southern village of Ouazaiyeh, Lebanon in this 2006 file photo. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/Mohammed Zaatari OTTAWA - The Canadian Red Cross and Mines Action Canada are calling for an immediate moratorium on cluster bombs.

The groups say the world cannot afford to wait for formal talks to bring about a ban because the unexploded bomblets, scattered by artillery and high-flying aircraft in war zones, are killing and maiming civilians every day.

Children are especially vulnerable because the bomblets are often an eye-catching yellow with small parachutes attached.

The Canadian groups say Ottawa should take a lead role in banning the weapon, as it did in creation of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, known by some as the Ottawa Convention on landmines.

The United Nations has estimated Israel dropped as many as four million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon last summer with perhaps 40 per cent of the submunitions failing to explode on impact.

The United States has said it is willing to negotiate a treaty on the use of cluster bombs but it still rejects a proposed global ban on the weapon, which 46 countries began negotiating in Oslo in February.

The Americans say there are sufficient controls on the weapon in existing treaties and they argue that cluster bombs, used carefully, have important military uses.