By IRNA,
London : Some of the most senior British former generals and NATO commanders are urging the government to agree to a total ban on cluster bombs, describing them as “inaccurate and unreliable”.
Their call comes as negotiations began in Dublin on Monday for an international treaty outlawing cluster munitions, which scatter large numbers of bomblets over a wide area, including many that fail to explode and lead to many civilians being later killed and maimed.
Those pressing the UK not to retain so-called ‘smart’ cluster bombs include former NATO commander General Lord Ramsbotham, and two former NATO and UN commanders in the Balkans, General Sir Michael Rose and General Sir Rupert Smith.
“To continue using these weapons when other countries ban them could seriously impede our standing in the world,” Ramsbotham warned.
The Ministry of Defence has agreed to abandon what it calls old “dumb” cluster munitions, but wants to keep two newer types of cluster weapons, the M85, an Israeli-designed artillery weapon and the CRV7 weapon system used on British Apache helicopters.
But the former defence chiefs rejected the MoD argument that Britain needed these weapons, saying instead that giving up the weapons would serve the UK’s military interests and “strengthen our ability to use force effectively in the modern world in the future.” “Cluster munitions were developed to combat a level of cold war confrontation that never happened.
However, in modern wars they have consistently caused civilian casualties, both during and after attacks,” they said in a letter to Defence Secretary Des Browne.
Their call was supported by a YouGov poll conducted this week that found 79 percent of Britons wanted the UK to support an international ban.
At the talks, Ireland’s new foreign minister, Michael Martin said he was confident that any treaty would discourage non-signatory states from promoting the weapons. This presumably included the US, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan boycotting the talks.
Both the US and UK have been criticised by human rights groups for using cluster bombs used in Iraq and causing “hundreds of preventable civilian deaths,” many of them in cities, despite pledges to avoid such indiscriminate weapons in populated areas.