As part of CALM,s international campaign to ban cluster bombs until
99.95% of them will explode when they hit the ground, CALM has written
to the US Ambassador in Wellington, asking him to convey our message
to his President. We have yet to receive a reply. We are including
this letter in the website hoping that others who read it will take
political action to support us.
H E Josiah H Beeman
Ambassador for the United States of America
U S Embassy
P O Box 1190
WELLINGTON
Your Excellency,
On the NBC Nightly News NBC TV on 7.00pm on June 30th 1999 under
the title of "US Soldiers Remove Landmines," Jim Meseta interviewed
Marty Riggs, a US munitions expert and a Persian Gulf veteran. Marty
Riggs said that the US Marines in Kosovo said that in "today's Kosovo
there is nothing more deadly than the unexploded NATO cluster bombs."
That afternoon Rigg's team had destroyed nine bomblets, a very small
fraction of the estimated thousands of unexploded cluster bomblets
littering Kosovo and Serbia.
Sir, I am writing to you on behalf of the New Zealand Campaign
Against Landmines, hoping that you will convey to your President,
the concern of many New Zealanders that cluster bombs have been
used so extensively in the recent conflict, hoping that he will
direct the Pentagon that the use of cluster bombs be banned .
You will have read in the papers that on June 21 two British Army's
Gurkha soldiers and two Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers were killed
when they were clearing unexploded cluster bombs from the village
Orlate, 30 km west of Pristina. When we read that the KLA had collected
over 100 of these yellow bomblets from around this small village
we must question how many of these brightly coloured bomblets there
are in Kosovo and Serbia lying waiting for inquisitive children
to pick them up.
To answer this question , US Pentagon official Ken Bacon has admitted
that there are thousands of small, unexploded bombs scattered across
Yugoslavia after NATO's 78-day air assault on Serb forces. Officials
say malfunctioning cluster bombs have left a deadly legacy. Ken
Bacon says about 11-hundred cluster bombs were dropped on Yugoslavia
during the air campaign. Each cluster bomb ejects more than 200
grenade-like "bomblets" that scatter over a target area and explode.
About five percent of the bomblets fail to go off at the time of
the attack, which means there are probably more than eleven thousand
unexploded weapons scattered across the country. In some cases,
the bomblets will go off if they are bumped, handled, or stepped
on. Many cluster bomblets are the size and shape of soft-drink cans,
and are covered in bright orange or yellow plastic. Mine experts
say the bright colours are supposed to make unexploded weapons easier
to avoid, but human-rights groups say the bright colours also make
the weapons attractive to children, who sometimes die when they
pick up what they think is a toy.
I spoke about cluster bombs when the National Consultative Committee
on Disarmament recently met with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
International Security and Arms Control Division. We were aware
that there is no international ban on the use of cluster bombs.
At present the NZ Government would not be prepared to initiate a
campaign banning these weapons---no country has to date taken a
stand on this issue-----but all in the room, aware that unexploded
cluster bombs acted as landmines, hoped that the International Campaign
to Ban Landmines would campaign to bring cluster bombs into the
framework of the Mine Ban Treaty.
All welcome the actions of the US Marines for their work in clearing
landmines in Kosovo, but it must be obvious that their work would
be much less dangerous if cluster bombs had never been invented.
Pentagon sources suggest that 5% of the bomblets do not explode
when hitting the ground. Other sources say that the failure rate
is as high as 15%.
We recall the Pentagon suing Alliant selling them a type of "smart
mine" because a significant proportion of those mines were not "smart"
and did not self destruct when expected. Technlogy has let the Pentagon
down again and it is to be hoped that the Pentagon will withdraw
all cluster bombs until the makers can guarantee that 99.95% will
explode on contact with the ground.
However, as the Pentagon have not taken this initiative, for humanitarian
reasons we call on your President to direct that cluster bombs be
no longer used unless they can be guaranteed to explode on contact
with theground.
Yours sincerely
John V Head
Spokesperson for the New Zealand Campaign Against Landmines
