Deadly Cluster Munitions on Offer

Actiongroup Landmine.DE
Thursday, 20 September 2007

DSEi - weapon manufacturers caught offering cluster munitions, despite ban of organizer

(Berlin/London – 20.9.2007) Various companies ignored the decision of Reed Exhibitions “to ban from display, publication, offer or marketing in any form, all munitions and references to them, that can loosely be described as Cluster Munitions” at the Defence Systems & Equipment International Exhibition (DSEi) held in London from the 11th to the 14th of September. 1.300 companies from more than 40 countries attended this year’s fair.

Like landmines, cluster munitions do not distinguish between friend and foe and therefore endanger and kill mainly civilians, as these bombs often have a high failure rate and become duds. According to Handicap International, these duds have caused more than 13.000 victims, 98% of them civilians. In February 2007, 49 states started the Oslo Process aiming at an international ban on cluster munitions. Currently 80 countries push this process, comparable to the initiative in 1997 which led to the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel landmines, now signed by 155 countries.

According to information made accessible to Actiongroup Landmine.de, at least 15 companies displayed either models or posters of cluster munitions, or marketed them via product catalogues, thus violating the ban on cluster munitions.

The US-American company Lockheed Martin Corp. displayed the 610mm ATACMS rocket, along with models of Blocks 1 and 1A, so far offered with warhead versions including 950 and 300 submunitions respectively. European companies BAE Systems, Nexter and GIWS (Gesellschaft für Intelligente Wirksysteme, (a subsidiary of German companies Rheinmetall and Diehl) showed their versions of the modern 155mm sensor-fuzed munition, BONUS and SMArt-155, carrying two autonomous submunitions.

Russia offered its products for export via the State Intermediary Agency Rosoboronexport. Their product range included MLRS 300mm rockets such as the 9M525 (72 fragmentation submunitions), the 9M527 (25 antitank mines), the 9M531 (588 High Explosive-Antitank submunitions) and the 9M533 (5 sensor-fuzed submunitions). MKEK (Makina ve Kimya Endustrisi Kurumu) from Turkey offered the 120mm MOD 258 Cargo Mortar Bomb that delivers 16 self-destructive submunitions of the type M85 aswell as the 155mm M483A1 (64 bomblets of the type M42 and 24 bomblets of the type M46) and M396 projectiles (M85 bomblets).

Moreover, despite being part of Reed Exhibitions’ ban, landmines could also be found at the fair. The Czech company Poličské strojírny a.s. offered the classic PT Mi-U anti-tank mine.

“Reed Exhibitions conveyed little or no concern for the breach of their own rules when confronted with the exhibitors’ disregard for the ban on cluster munitions at the DSEi,” says Thomas Küchenmeister of Actiongroup Landmine.de. “This goes to show that both the organizers of the exhibition and the manufacturers of these weapons seem to operate with a set of double standards in regard to their policies on cluster munitions.”

The organizer made it clear that no products of this family of weapons would be allowed at the fair. “Reed Exhibitions had a responsibility to ensure compliance with the rules,” comments Thomas Küchenmeister, “its failure to do so is as disappointing as the global weapon manufacturers’ disdain for the organizer’s prohibition of any product related to cluster munitions at the exhibition.”