Monday, May 26

Notable for its absence during the Oslo process, the United States is attempting to impose its position on the countries currently meeting in Dublin to ratify the text of the treaty prohibiting cluster bombs. To bring pressure on the on-going negotiations, the United States has resorted to blackmail. After having used the interoperability argument in Wellington, the American administration today menaces the countries signing the future treaty to no longer participate with them in operations for maintaining peace or providing humanitarian assistance. Handicap International denounces these American intimidation attempts.

Along with China and Russia, the United States is the third large country absent from the international conference to prohibit cluster bombs organized under the auspices of the UN. Over one hundred nations nonetheless participate in this meeting, which opened in Dublin on May 19. The reason for this absence? The American administration is opposed to the prohibition of these arms. Stephen Mull, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, started by declaring that these munitions have a “certain military usefulness” to stop, for example, “the progression of an enemy army.”

But the U.S. position has become more radical and the arguments used are more and more reprehensible. The American administration esteems that the prohibition of cluster bombs could call into question the participation of the United States in peace-keeping or humanitarian operations. “If this convention is adopted in its current form,” explains a high-ranking American representative, “no Navy ships could technically be associated to a peace-keeping operation, to emergency aid after a natural catastrophe or to humanitarian assistance, like we are doing right this moment following the earthquake in China and the typhoon in Myanmar, without mentioning all we did in Southeast Asia after the tsunami in December 2004. This is because most American Army units have this type of weapon in their supplies.”

Today, victims of cluster bombs and the UN representatives present in Dublin protested in front of the American embassy to condemn these declarations and to demand that the United States stop interfering in a process which they are not part of. In addition, Handicap International points out that the signature of the Treaty of Ottawa against anti-personnel mines ten years ago had no impact on the participation of the United States in humanitarian operations, although the country never signed this treaty.