Cluster Bombs, Landmines, Axis of Evil?………..
“More than 100 nations have agreed a draft treaty banning the use of cluster bombs. While the United States, China, Russia and other key military powers are not signatories, human rights campaigners are hailing the agreement as a breakthrough…..… The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has estimated that in Laos alone, 9 to 27 million unexploded submunitions remain, and some 11,000 people have been killed or injured. At least 14 countries have used cluster bombs, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, Israel, Morocco, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. A small number of non-state armed groups have used them. (But none of the original axis of evil?)……… The U.N. estimated that Israel used several million submunitions in Lebanon during a 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas, who also fired more than 100 cluster munition rockets into northern Israel……….”
“President Barack Obama has no plans to join a global treaty banning landmines because a policy review found the United States could not meet its security commitments without the weapons, the State Department said on Tuesday. "This administration undertook a policy review and we decided that our land mine policy remains in effect," spokesman Ian Kelly told a briefing five days ahead of a review conference in Cartegena, Colombia, on the 10-year-old Mine Ban Treaty………. The Mine Ban Treaty, which went into force on March 1, 1999, bans the use, stockpiling, production or transfer of antipersonnel mines. It has been endorsed by 156 countries, but several powers -- including the United States, Russia, China and India -- have not adopted it. Landmines are known to have caused 5,197 casualties last year, a third of them children, according to the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), which links some 1,000 activist groups……..”
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