Serbia Hosts Conference Against Cluster Munitions

Wednesday, 3 October 2007
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network

Belgrade _ Representatives from 23 countries that are struggling with the effects of the wartime use of cluster munitions met on Wednesday to discuss a new international treaty aimed at banning these weapons.

Envoys from a number of other governments that support the new treaty are also attending the conference in Belgrade, which is being held under the auspices of the Serbian government and the Cluster Munitions Coalition, CMC watchdog.

“The rights and needs of victims of cluster munitions must be at the heart of the new international treaty to ban these weapons,” Thomas Nash, a CMC coordinator said ahead of the conference.

Cluster munitions are artillery or aerial weapons that disperse as many as several hundred smaller anti-personnel or anti-armour sub-munitions or bomblets over wide areas. Between two and six percent of bomblets fail to detonate on impact, but remain armed and ready to explode. 

The initiative was launched by Serbia, which is trying to remove unexploded cluster sub-munitions used during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against now-defunct Yugoslavia aimed at ousting Serbian security forces from Kosovo province.

Serbia is a former user, producer and stockpiler of these weapons. The government had earlier announced that it was “an unwilling possessor of cluster munitions.” 

More than a dozen people in Serbia have been killed or maimed by unexploded cluster sub-munitions that remained after the 1999 air-war.

 “We know what it means to live through cluster bomb attacks and the consequences of unexploded sub-munitions, we know the painstaking and dangerous work it takes to clear them, and we know the challenges of assisting those who survive an accident caused by cluster bombs,” said Branislav Kapetanovic, a Serbian demining expert who lost both legs and arms in a cluster bomblet blast in 2000. 

“We want our governments to take the lead in the ban process in order to prevent other countries, and other innocent people, from suffering what we have suffered,” he added.

 The Belgrade conference is part of the so-called Oslo Process aimed at concluding a treaty that would ban cluster munitions by 2008, and it will focus on assistance to victims and bomblet clearance.

“Negotiating a ban treaty is not all about technical issues and military interests. It is first and foremost about protecting human lives,” said Emil Jeremic, Regional Representative of Norwegian People’s Aid in South East Europe.

 At least 75 countries stockpile cluster munitions and 34 are known to have produced more than 210 types of cluster munitions. Fourteen states have used cluster munitions in at least 30 countries and territories.