US allies must stop trying to weaken cluster bomb treaty

The small number of spoilers should join the majority in banning cluster munitions with no exceptions, writes Jody Williams

The small number of spoilers should join the majority in banning cluster munitions with no exceptions, writes Jody Williams

FINAL NEGOTIATIONS on a new treaty to ban cluster munitions opened in Dublin on May 19th. By the end of the first week, good progress had been made on some provisions in the draft treaty, including historic language on assistance to victims of cluster munitions.

However, discussions on other issues seemed at an impasse, particularly concerning use of banned cluster munitions in joint military operations ("assistance") with states that do not join the treaty.

One frustrated diplomat, after hours of difficult informal talks to resolve the impasse, said he felt everyone was really negotiating this point with a country not at the table: the United States. The US has refused to join the process - launched in Oslo in February 2007 - to bring about a cluster ban treaty, now scheduled to be agreed later this week in Dublin. It also has vowed never to join such a treaty.

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For its part, the US has made no secret of its manoeuvring. When members of the Cluster Munition Coalition - the non-governmental organisations working closely with governments on the treaty - met an American official recently, he bragged that the US had "spoken with" more than 110 countries about this treaty.

The US has told allies it will not alter its military doctrine, structure or deployments to accommodate the cluster munition treaty. Further, the US has threatened that it will not remove its cluster munitions stockpiled in countries that join the treaty - even though it removed landmines stockpiled in countries that are part of the Mine Ban Treaty. As Tim Shipman wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald this past week, "US officials are frantically warning their allies not to sign the treaty as it now stands, because it would undermine Nato and criminalise soldiers who fight alongside them."

An official from the US state department warned that under the treaty, British frontline troops who call in artillery support or air strikes [in Afghanistan or Iraq] from an American war plane, all of which carry cluster munitions, could be hauled into court.

The US wants allies to remove or seriously weaken a key provision in the draft treaty that prohibits governments from "assisting, inducing, or encouraging" states that do not join the treaty with any act that is prohibited by the treaty ostensibly to "protect" Nato and allied soldiers. The US is dissembling on those two points as well as others it is advancing to confuse delegates in Dublin. It is not shocking that the US seems to be pulling out all the stops to get its way. What is shocking is that governments - in particular those that took a lead in banning landmines, such as Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Australia, as well as Denmark, the Netherlands and Japan - are doing all they can to weaken the treaty to accommodate the US. Just as the ban on landmines has not undermined Nato, neither will the treaty banning cluster munitions.

In 1997, all of Nato except the US signed the Mine Ban Treaty. It had no impact on Nato or joint military operations. Belgium banned cluster munitions unilaterally in 2006, and a Belgian official said their ban has not affected its participation in Nato operations. In fact, a Government official in Dublin told me a recentl internal Nato study found that joint operations would not be affected by Nato members signing a cluster munition treaty with the prohibition on assistance intact. Despite all of this, Nato allies are using the US argument as they try to introduce language that would undercut the prohibition on assistance. In response to US statements that allied soldiers would be held liable by mere participation in joint operations where the US used cluster munitions, negotiating states have said they need to add language to the prohibition on assistance to protect their troops. Various governments have offered clear and simple language that would meet that end and are meeting with fierce opposition from the governments mentioned above.

These governments insist the only way they can protect their troops is with language that will allow them to participate in joint operations with the US where cluster munitions are used. Rather than protecting their own troops, they are attempting to accommodate the US military by creating a loophole big enough for a US attack helicopter loaded with cluster bombs to fly through. How can any country say it is interested in banning cluster munitions while proposing language not to protect its troops, but to allow them to, in effect, to use the cluster munitions of the US?

It is beyond time for the elephant to be ushered from the room. It is time for a handful of US allies to stop trying to weaken the future treaty banning cluster bombs to accommodate that elephant. The overwhelming number of the 109 participating nations are gathered in Dublin to negotiate a comprehensive treaty to ban the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions causing unnecessary harm to civilians. It is time for the small number of spoilers to join that majority and ban cluster munitions with no exceptions, no loopholes and no delays.

Jody Williams received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work as the founding co-ordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL). She is one of the founding members of the Nobel Women's Initiative and is attending the cluster bomb conference in Dublin as a member of this initiative