Humanitarian concerns stall cluster bomb accord

Religious leaders and disarmament campaigners hailed the decision in
Geneva by 50 countries to derail a proposal backed by the United States,
Russia, China, India and Israel to create a new global accord on
cluster bombs, contending that it did not meet humanitarian concerns.

The
proposal, put forth during the Fourth Review Conference of the
Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW), which ended November 25,
called for the destruction of all cluster munitions produced before
1980. However, it would have allowed the use of munitions with a failure
rate of 1 percent or less, as well as those with only one safeguard
mechanism.

"The bottom line is the use of these weapons would have
continued in some form, and we look to the day when these weapons are
banned," said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's permanent
representative to the UN.