By Luis Jaime Cisneros
LIMA, Peru (AFP): An international conference seeking to ban cluster bombs decided Thursday to make Latin America and the Caribbean cluster bomb-free regions, while France raised eyebrows calling for limitations to a ban on the deadly submunitions.
The proposal of the French delegation, one of 70 attending the three-day meeting ending Friday, "marks a step backward for the negotiations," Handicap International, among several non-governmental groups at the meeting told AFP.
The conference aims at broadening support for an initiative launched at the first meeting in Oslo in February, in which 46 countries called for an international treaty to eliminate cluster bombs by 2008.
The munitions contain as many as hundreds of bomblets, also known as submunitions, which scatter over wide areas. Many of the bomblets do not explode on impact, and lie dormant for years or decades. In many cases, they blow up when children pick them up to play with them, delegates said.
China, Russia and the United States, the largest manufacturers of cluster bombs, oppose the ban on the submunition.
While Latin America and Africa seem keen to institute a complete ban on production and stockpiling of cluster bombs, some European nations are inclined to allow stockpiling of the weapon, said Handicap International spokesman Jean-Marc Boivin.
The Europeans would also like to exclude from the ban so-called intelligent bombs that only deal with "military targets," he added.
The French delegates insisted that while a UN convention on classical weapons was the chief forum to negotiate such matters, they were proposing "a partial ban affecting only the most dangerous submunitions," such as cluster bombs.
"We don't want to engage in technical discussions," said Handicap International's Sabrina Montanvert. "What we want is to stop civilians from being killed" by indiscriminate weapons.
A statement issued by Handicap headquarters in Lyon, France, reminded France's ministers of Defense Herve Morin and Foreign Affairs Bernard Kouchner that they had signed a Handicap statement urging France to ban cluster bombs.
Thirteen Latin American countries proposed Thursday that their area and the Caribbean basin be declared cluster bomb and landmine-free regions, and that a meeting take place in August in Costa Rica to discuss steps toward that goal.
The declaration should also include a commitment never to use cluster bombs and landmines in the regions, said a spokesman for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
Chile said it would support a regional ban on deadly submunitions and denied earlier reports that included it along with Argentina and Brazil as the only manufacturers of cluster bombs in the region.
"Chile used to be a producer, but it has stopped making and selling them since the mid 1990s," the Chilean delegate told AFP, adding that the Oslo conference and the International Red Cross were aware of Chile's decision.
He admitted, however, that Chile still stockpiled cluster bombs.
Argentina and Chile have sent delegations to the cluster bomb conference. Brazil has not and neither has the United States.
At least 400 million people live in areas contaminated by unexploded bomblets weapons, according to Handicap International and other groups supporting the proposed ban.
The bombs are largely found in the Middle East, where they are used by Israel; in southeast Asian countries, where the United States deployed them in the 1970s, and in the former Yugoslavia.
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