GENEVA: Peace organisations applauded Friday’s decision by the 89 states party to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to begin talks on an agreement to handle post-conflict humanitarian problems created by undetonated explosives, such as the cluster bombs used in attacks against Iraq.

The CCW delegations approved the creation of a working group that is to draw up measures aimed at curbing the casualties caused by these leftover munitions.

The proposed legally-binding agreement would cover states’ obligations for clearing unexploded munitions after a conflict and efforts to provide risk education to civilians for the dangers faced during and after armed conflict.

Disarmament activists are urging the inter-governmental group to also study measures to prevent the use of weapons that are known to fail to explode and thus turn into a latent danger.

Peter Herby, of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said the creation of the working group is “a very important step towards addressing the problem” of explosive war remnants.

The adoption of this mandate is a political commitment on the part of states to work to reduce the impact which unexploded remnants of war are having in zones around the world in conflict and after conflict, he said.

Some 84 countries worldwide are currently affected by the remnants of war munitions. In 53 of those nations there were new civilian casualties from explosive remnants of war during the year 2001.

Such unexploded ordnance is unlike anti-personnel mines because each explosive device has the potential to cause numerous injuries and deaths, according to disarmament activists.

The non-governmental organisations attending the CCW meeting reported that landmines tend to cause one death at a time, but unexploded war munitions tend to claim numerous victims.

Although an official definition of explosive remnants of war is not found in the CCW, the Convention’s member states agree that they encompass all unexploded devices, including abandoned ordnance, but do not include landmines.

The ICRC says that submunitions, which include cluster bombs, are responsible for a disproportionate number of the deaths and injuries occurring in post-war situations.

Richard Lloyd, of Landmine Action, noted that since the start of the 1991 Gulf War, “cluster submunitions have been used in massive numbers in attacks against Iraq, and are considered a greater threat than landmines to civilians in the south of the country.”

Steve Goose, director of the arms division at the New York- based Human Rights Watch, commented that it is “particularly relevant as war looms in Iraq” to recall that 25 per cent of the bombs that the United States forces dropped during the Gulf War were cluster bombs.

“These left millions of bomblets,” he said, “which subsequently killed or injured more than 4,000 civilians.”

The Human Rights Watch experts acknowledged that the CCW made progress during the sessions that wrapped up on Friday. However, he said it is “clear that governments are not yet ready to fully embrace the challenge of addressing the issue of explosive remnants of war.”

This week’s sessions of the CCW, which has been dubbed the “Convention on Inhumane Weapons”, suffered from the “tyranny of consensus”, in which any one government could block progress, noted Goose.

The delegations from the United States and China stood in the way of closer study of several issues. In general, the government representatives gathered in Geneva avoided the more difficult issues, such as submunitions or cluster bombs.

They did not talk about problems related to cluster bombs during conflict or the possible technical solutions to the problems that unexploded cluster bombs inevitably leave behind, killing and injuring civilians during very long periods after conflict, said Goose.

“We are disappointed that the United States would not accept the notion of victim assistance as a pillar of the work that is to be done in mitigating the social effects of explosive remnants,” he added.

Washington apparently is afraid that a treaty obligation to provide assistance to victims of leftover ordnance explosions could mean a flood of future lawsuits.

ICRC, Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action are urging a moratorium on the use of cluster bombs until the failure rate of explosion can be reduced through technical improvements.—Dawn/InterPress News Service.