By Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst
Published in The Independent, Open House Blogs
May 22, 2008
If the devil is in the details then Satan is hard at work here. We’ve gathered at the home of the Gaelic Games to write a major new piece of international law. Here in the massive Croke Park Stadium in Dublin, nearly 1,000 diplomats and campaigners are thronging the chilly halls to hammer out the final text of a treaty banning cluster munitions. The United Kingdom is one of the lynchpin nations here, but they are clinging to their last cluster munitions and have thoroughly isolated themselves. Their delegation is doing all it can to defend the CRV-7 cluster rockets and it looks like they might just leave if they are not allowed to keep them. Why hold out for these and their M85s that failed so miserably in Basra in 2003? Part of the answer is the invisible elephant in the room, the absent United States whose interests the UK seems hell-bent on defending here. It's also the UK Ministry of Defence dictating policy to the government, supporting some nonexistent “need” to support joint NATO operations - which is funny since in Afghanistan, NATO is not allowed to use cluster munitions.
|
Why are we here? These weapons are indiscriminate killers. I walked through Basra in 2003 after British cluster munitions rained hot death upon the town, killing and maiming civilians. After the war, the carnage continued as children picked up the many unexploded duds; the lucky went to hospital for amputations, the rest are long buried. After Israel saturated Lebanon with 4 million cluster munitions in 2006, the world finally decided these weapons should be outlawed, and after two years of negotiating we are in the endgame. The UK is playing a critical role. As the closest ally of the United States, a member of NATO, and the single largest user of clusters at this conference, what the UK does influences many. Up to now the influence has been perceived as negative, but Gordon Brown’s statement gives us new hope: he opened the door to the possibility of a major change in policy. Instead of making a Faustian pact, he can take back the soul of the negotiations and show Britain is truly great.
