CLUSTER MUNITIONS: Close But No Cigar
Something of a roller coaster of a week with the discussions in Geneva veering wildly between total collapse in the evening only to bounce back with renewed hope the next morning. In one way this is encouraging as it means that the majority of countries simply refuse to be put off in trying to find a solution, but it is a rather exhausting process and progress is slow.
The countries who cannot yet join the rest of us in banning cluster munitions usually have large stocks of dumb cluster munitions and believe that it would be too expensive and too risky for their own national defence to give up these weapons. One can understand this. But some of these countries often seem to fail to understand is that the international community is simply not prepared to accept that people should be allowed to continue to sell dumb cluster munitions, or send them to new areas of conflict. Nor is the international community willing to accept a repeat of what happened in the Lebanon in 2006.
Finding the compromise is still proving
elusive. Despite some very hard work behind the scenes over recent weeks by the US, the French and
ourselves, the discussions in the GGE are essentially stalled.
However, we still have until the end of the main CCW meeting next week to
find a solution, or agree to continue work next year.
Posted at 10:37 07 November 2008 by John Duncan | Comments[0]
- Share this with:
-
-
-
-
-