An international conference without the main players

It's a familiar story. Pious words from the leaders of many major powers, but when it comes down to the wire, the rhetoric comes to nought.

So it will be with the forthcoming international conference in Dublin to address the use of cluster bombs. What countries are going to be missing? The US, China, Russia and Israel. That Israel won't be attending perhaps comes as no surprise being the most recent user of cluster bombs at the end of the Lebanon-Israel War in August 2006.

Spiegel OnLine International reports:

"International envoys are meeting in Dublin for a 12-day conference to hammer out a deal that would ban the use of cluster bombs. Big producers like the US and Israel will not be attending, while the pressure is on the UK to push to water down the treaty to prevent it undermining the NATO alliance.

Almost 10 years after the Ottawa Treaty banned the use of landmines, more than 100 countries are gathering on Monday to attempt to ban cluster bombs as well. However, the United States and other big producers will not be attending. Washington is arguing that the proposed treaty threatens to undermine the very fabric of NATO (more...).
Envoys are gathering in the Irish capital Dublin for a conference that aims to agree on a convention banning cluster bombs. The states will negotiate the terms of the international treaty that would prohibit the use, production and stockpiling of the cluster munitions by the signatories.

However the biggest producers of the cluster weapons, the United States, China, Israel and Russia, are not attending the 12-day conference and have been lobbying hard to have it watered down. Benjamin Chang, a spokesman for the US mission to the United Nations, told Reuters that Washington is opposed to any ban. "We do not believe they are indiscriminate weapons."

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