Global ban on cluster bombs
(From The Japan Times Dec. 13 issue)

クラスター爆弾全廃を求めて

About 100 countries, including Japan, signed a treaty Dec. 3 in Oslo , Norway, to ban cluster bombs. It goes into effect about six months after 30 countries have ratified it. Japan should start the ratification process as soon as possible.

Bomblets clustered into bombs are scattered over vast areas and often fail to explode immediately. They can explode a long time after military conflicts, killing and injuring civilians. A 2006 study by the non-governmental organization Handicap International covering 24 countries says cluster bombs killed or maimed some 11,000 people over three decades, and that 98 percent of them were civilians and about 27 percent children.

The treaty bans the use, development, production, procurement, stockpiling and transfer of cluster bombs. Signatories have agreed to dispose of existing stockpiles within eight years, and to support activities designed to remove dud bomblets and help victims.

New types of cluster bombs, each containing less than 10 bomblets and containing self-destruction devices, are outside the treaty's scope. The United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan are not parties to the treaty.

Cluster bombs were used in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chechnya conflict and the 2006 Lebanon war. But 18 of the 26 NATO member countries, including Britain, France and Germany, have signed the treaty.

It is important that signatories to the treaty sway global opinion against cluster bombs. Doing so will create an environment in which non-signatory countries find it difficult to use the indiscriminate weapon.

The treaty allows signatory countries to have military cooperation with non-signatory countries. This provision prompted Japan, which has a security treaty with the United States, to sign the treaty. Japan plans to introduce precision-guided weapons to replace its more than 8,000 cluster bombs.

Japan should ask the United States to remove such weapons from its arsenal in Japan. It also should vigorously support removal of dud bomblets and help victims as it has been doing in the case of anti-personnel mines.

日本を含む約100カ国がクラスター爆弾禁止条約に署名した。条約は30カ国が批准して6ヵ月後に発効する。日本は批准を急ぐべきだ。

同弾から撒かれる子爆弾は不発が多く、戦闘終結後に爆発して住民を殺傷する。

条約はクラスター爆弾の使用、製造、開発、貯蔵、保有、移転を禁止する。同条約は、子爆弾が十個未満で自己破壊機能付きの新型爆弾は禁止しない。米露中、イスラエル、インド、パキスタンは条約に不参加だ。

締約国が国際世論の流れをつくり、無差別兵器が使いにくい環境をつくることが大切だ。

非締約国との軍事協力は可能という条項が、米国と同盟国である日本を締約に踏み切らせた。

日本は米国に対し、日本国内の同弾の撤去を求める一方で、積極的にクラスター弾除去や被害者支援をすべきだ。