The United States as well as Russia, India, Pakistan, and Israel have declined to join 100 other nations at a conference in Dublin that examines the use of Cluster munitions. State department expert Stephen Mull acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, said the weapons have a "certain military utility." Mull states that the U.S. will instead continue to work within the framework of The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, initated by the United Nations on October 10, 1980 and ratified by 50 nations by April of the following year. The section that most specifically speaks to this issue, Protocol V on Explosive Remnants of War was adopted on 28 November 2003.
'For example, if the convention passes in its current form, any U.S. military ship would be technically not able to get involved in a peacekeeping operation like disaster relief, or humanitarian assistance, as we are doing right now in the aftermath of the earthquake in China and the typhoon in Burma, not to mention everything we did in southeast Asia after the tsunami in December of 2004," Mull said.'
No comments:
Post a Comment