In a policy shift, America's Pentagon wants cluster bombs that are safer. A three-page memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would require that after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate.
Limiting the amount of live munitions left on the battlefield would lessen the danger to innocent civilians who could be killed or severely injured if they accidentally detonate the bombs. Also, by next June the Defense Department will begin to reduce its inventory of cluster bombs that do not meet the new safety requirements.
The new Defense Department plan comes more than a month after 111 nations, including many of America's key NATO partners, adopted a treaty outlawing all current designs of cluster munitions. The agreement also required that stockpiles be destroyed within eight years.
Opponents have complained that the Pentagon has moved too slowly to reduce the cluster munitions from its inventory.
Cluster bombs scatter hundreds of smaller explosives over a large area, where those bomblets can sit for years until they are disturbed and explode.
U.S. leaders boycotted the May talks, as did Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan, all leading cluster bomb makers who cite the military value of the deadly explosives.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who has led efforts to outlaw cluster munitions, said the Pentagon's move is a step back. A defense policy issued by then-Defense Secretary William Cohen in early 2001, Leahy said, called for a similar reduction in submunitions from the cluster bombs by 2005.
"Now the Bush administration's 'new' policy is to wait another 10 years," said Leahy, calling it "another squandered opportunity for U.S. leadership." He said that in wake of the international treaty agreement, the Pentagon's plan to wait another decade before requiring the 99 percent detonation rate cannot be justified.
Source:Xinhua
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