Around 100 countries to sign cluster bomb ban in Oslo

NORWAY: Around 100 countries will ban the use of cluster bombs with the signing of a treaty Wednesday in Oslo but major producers such as China, Russia and the United States are shunning the pact.

The treaty, agreed upon in Dublin in May, outlaws the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions which primarily kill civilians.

"It's only one of the very few times in history that an entire category of weapons has been banned," said Thomas Nash of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC) umbrella group that comprises some 300 non-governmental organisations.

"It's unlikely now that you're going to see large scale use of cluster bombs," he said. Dropped from planes or fired from artillery, cluster bombs explode in mid-air to randomly scatter hundreds of bomblets, which can be three inches (eight centimetres) in size.

Many cluster bomblets can fail to explode, often leaving poverty-stricken areas trying to recover from war littered with countless de-facto landmines.

According to Handicap International, about 100,000 people have been maimed or killed by cluster bombs around the world since 1965, 98 percent of them civilians. More than a quarter of the victims are children who mistake the bomblets for toys or tin cans.

"This is not about disarmament, this is not about arms control. This is a humanitarian issue," said Annette Abelsen, a senior advisor at the foreign ministry in Norway which played a key role in hammering out the international agreement. In Laos, the most affected country in the world, the US Air Force dropped 260 million cluster bombs between 1964 and 1973, or the equivalent of a fully-loaded B52 bomber's cargo dropped every eight minutes for nine years.

Oslo, Monday, AFP