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TechnoratiNATO Comes Clean on Cluster Bombs Dropped on Serbia
NATO chiefs will this week finally tell the Serbian government where they dropped thousands of cluster bombs during the Kosovo campaign, more than eight years after the bombardment finished.
Allied commanders have bowed to mounting pressure from foreign governments and pressure groups and will hand over full coordinates for the hundreds of bombing sorties. Belgrade hopes this could pinpoint thousands of unexploded munitions still littering parts of the country.
The pledge from NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (Shape) will end a delay condemned by human rights groups and described as "shameful" by one British minister.
The US, Britain and Holland are believed to have dropped more than 2,000 cluster bombs -- containing 380,000 sub-munitions -- during Operation Allied Force, the three-month campaign to end Serb oppression in Kosovo in 1999. The RAF dropped 531 RBL755 cluster bombs, designed principally to destroy tanks and other armored vehicles.
But furious condemnation erupted after at least 23 Serb civilians were killed by cluster munitions during the campaign. Since the operation, the Allied forces have admitted the bombs had a failure rate of at least 5 per cent, meaning up to 20,000 unexploded bomb-lets may be strewn across Serbia and Kosovo.
The sub-munitions are designed to explode immediately or burst to deposit anti-personnel devices over an area the size of several football pitches.
A conference this year heard that at least six Serbs -- including three children -- had been killed by exploding cluster munitions since 1999, and 12 people, six of them children, wounded. In the most notorious incident, five ethnic Albanian children were killed during the campaign, when seven youngsters picked up one of the "yellow killers", thinking it was a toy.
Serbian officials report that up to 23 square kilometers in six areas suffer "cluster contamination". Agriculture and development are banned in several rural areas.
But British ministers confessed this summer that, despite Serb requests, the co-ordinates of RAF bombing raids had not been given to Belgrade. Baroness Royall of Blaisdon said Britain had given the information to Nato, but it had not been passed on. She added: "I do think it is rather shameful."
Tory peer Lord Elton, a leading campaigner against the bombs, said ministers had confirmed in mid-May that the co-ordinates had been supplied to NATO and NATO "would in due course hand them to Serbia". He added: "That's eight years for children to blow their feet off. Why can't we send our co-ordinates direct and get others to do the same?".
Now critics claim it may be too late recover thousands of aging, unstable munitions. The UK has contributed £86,000 to the Serbian Mine Action Center for equipment; in Lebanon, Britain gave £2.7m to help the clean-up after the Israeli attack last summer.
A Foreign Office spokes-man said: "NATO now have everything they need and intend to share it with the Serbs in the next week."
8 Comments so far
Show AllOne leg two legs who cares the means ALWAYS JUSTIFYS THE END. When you spend the wealth of a nation to find better ways to kill, its important to use the wepons. Don't worry be happy.
Has anyone read Dr. Michael Parenti's book, 'TO KILL A NATION' The Attack On Yugoslavia? If not, do so.
Good point, impishparrot. One of the basic principles of Just War is that we limit unintended casualties, i.e. women, children, civilians, and even soldiers after the conclusion of fighting. These weapons make it impossible to do that. They keep killing decades after the end of the war and in the case of depleted uraniun even centuries. Nobody would say that Northerners need to keep killing Southerners from the U.S. civil war, but it has only been 10 years since land mines from that war were found in Alabama. We need to find better methods to resolve our differences.
It isn't just NATO and cluster bombs of the physical order. The clusterbomb of stasis being experienced in inability to respond to undermining of education, freedom of information, distortion to manipulate resources, etc... is the reciprocal psychological reaction of the society that has engaged the practices. One can read Walter Wink, "Engaging the Powers"; Andrew J. McKenna, "Violence and Difference" for a start on seeing and articulating the dynamic holding society in thrall.
It isn't just NATO the US dominates. The security council veto, combined with Zionist lobbying and media control prowess in the US, has effectively prevented the UN from doing the job it was formed to do in the vicinity of Israel. The US hard right has done the same with Iraq.
It is not just cluster bombs and DU. It is total munitions used, combined with deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure plus failure to do do IFFN when targeting. (IFFN: Identification Friend Foe or Neutral. The US only does IFF, and classifies possible Foe (but often likely Neutral) as Foe.
This war, depleted uranium ammunition that causes cancer among children and women, cluster bombs, deliberate killing of civilans working in TV Serbia, bombing a passenger train.... all this was brought upon us by Bill Clinton, the person who must face the justice for his war crimes.
NATO is dominated by the USA. It should be shut down,and all WMDs destroyed. The prosecution of prominent members of the political, military and economic leadership (like the Nuremberg trials) of the Bush regime is essentional. It might take a few years, but it must happen. The freedom and prestige of such deadly and hurtful people in our society is a mocks justice.
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http://www.freehugscampaign.org/
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"The time for war has past."
The World Teacher
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Wake up Americans. Its not just NATO. The US, along with others, have dropped tons of cluster bombs and never cleaned them up.
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_The Gulf region has 1.2 million bomblets left unexploded from the 1991 Gulf War and the current war in Iraq. The leftover weapons have killed an estimated 1,220 Kuwaitis and 400 Iraqi civilians.
_U.S. forces in Iraq used 13,000 cluster bombs with almost 2 million bomblets in 2003, during the initial invasion. During the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 against al-Qaida centers and the Taliban government that sheltered them, the U.S. used 1,228 cluster bombs with 248,056 bomblets; they have killed 127 civilians, 70 percent under the age of 18.
_In Laos, U.S. bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s left 9 million to 20 million bomblets, which have killed 11,000 people, three out of 10 of them children.
_Israel dropped an estimated 4 million bomblets in southern Lebanon in its war against the Hezbollah guerrillas last year, and an estimated 1 million did not explode. The background sheet cited reports that Hezbollah retaliated with cluster bombs of their own.
The U.S. military's arsenal contains 5.5 million cluster bombs containing 728 million bomblets, the senators' statement said. It said many fail at rates of 1 percent or higher.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5haTLOCrj-hNmVmOsqCas31UuyEYw