Mission & Justice

30/5/08

Diplomats from 111 nations, including Australia, have agreed on a treaty to ban current designs of cluster bombs and require the destruction of stockpiles within eight years. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown broke the deadlock in Dublin, describing the ban as a “big step forward to make the world a safer place”. But leading producers and users of the controversial weapons, including the US, China, India, Pakistan, Russia and Israel, rejected the ban after refusing to join the talks. The agreement capped more than a year of negotiations begun in Norway and pressed home over 10 days in Dublin.

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29/5/08

Private and state-owned Israeli defense manufacturers have signed overseas sales contracts worth around $10 billion over the past two years, a senior defense official said Thursday. Yossi Ben-Hannan, chief of export sales at the Defense Ministry, told The Associated Press that the biggest clients were the United States and India, accounting between them for about $3 billion in deals signed over the past year. He did not give a breakdown. Israel said last year that with $4.3 billion in sales in 2007 it had became the world’s fourth largest defense exporter, behind the United States, Russia and France and ahead of Britain. Ben-Hannan said the trade gives a valuable boost to Israel’s economy.

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Richard Norton-Taylor; 29/5/08

Britain is preparing to scrap its arsenal of cluster bombs in the face of a growing clamour against weapons that have killed and maimed thousands of civilians. Officials are paving the way for the unexpected step at talks involving more than 100 countries in Dublin on a treaty aimed at a worldwide ban. Well-placed sources made it clear yesterday that despite opposition from the military, the British Government is prepared to eliminate the cluster munitions from its armoury. These munitions are the Israeli-designed M85 artillery weapon, used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and in attacks on Lebanon two years ago; and the M73, part of a weapons system for Apache helicopters. “The Prime Minister is very much behind this process and wants us to sign (the treaty),” a senior Foreign Office source said. “If we sign … we will lose the M85 and the M73.”

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26/5/08

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has said Israel holds at least 150 nuclear weapons, the first time a U.S. president has publicly acknowledged Israel’s atomic arsenal. Asked at a news conference at Wales’s Hay literary festival on Sunday how a future U.S. president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally. “The U.S. has more more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the So-viet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry … not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target,” he said, according to a transcript of his remarks. Carter also con-demned Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth,” according to the Agence France-Presse news agency.

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Sir Cyril Townsend; 24/5/08

In a rapidly changing media world, it is agreeable to note that the Letters Column of The Times of London has altered little. Letters are still addressed to The Editor, and begin with Sir and end Yours Faithfully. Although The Daily Telegraph, a kind of daily briefing for the professional classes, sells more copies, The Times has a greater influence, and it is the first choice for an individual or an organization seeking to put forward a point of view on the issues of the day. On May 19, there was a letter in The Times that caught my eye under the heading: “Cluster bombs don’t work and must be banned.” It was signed by no less than nine former extremely senior military commanders led by Field Marshal Lord Bramall (chief of the Defense Staff — 1982-85). Other names were Gen. Sir Michael Rose (commander UN Protection Force, Bosnia — 1994-95), Gen. Sir Rupert Smith (commander 1st Armored Division in the 19 1991 Gulf War), and Maj. Gen. Patrick Cordingley (commander 7th Armored Brigade 1991 Gulf War).

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Louise Hall; 25/5/08

The Australian Government is frustrating attempts by the international community to ban cluster bombs, blamed for killing and maiming thousands of civilians. Talks are being held in Dublin to thrash out a treaty that would completely wipe out the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster munitions among the 109 potential signatories. France and Britain have announced their intention to ban weapons that cause “unacceptable harm” but a group of countries including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands are push-ing for an exemption clause on joint operations with states outside the treaty that may use cluster bombs. This includes major producers and stockpilers China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia and the US.

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Michael Evans; 23/5/08

Prime Minister Gordon Brown signalled his intention to phase out the use of all cluster bombs by British armed forces yesterday, even as the US reiterated its opposition to a worldwide ban on the dangerous munitions. Mr Brown’s statement yesterday electrified an international conference on cluster bombs in Dublin, which hopes to achieve a treaty prohibiting their use. Human rights activists interpreted it as a significant switch in British policy.  A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minister had asked the Ministry of Defence to review the risk to civilians posed by the last two remaining weapons deployed with the armed forces, the artillery-fired M85 and the helicopter-launched M73. Until now, Britain supported a ban on condition that it excluded the two systems still used by British troops overseas. They emphasised that the weapons had self-destruct mechanisms so that they did not pose a long-term threat to civilians.

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21/5/08

Guns are brought into the country in logging ships and exchanged with locals for money and animal species in the country. This was revealed by a project officer in Kikori, Gulf Province yesterday while listing the items confiscated by the Internal Revenue Commission team from a Chinese logging ship bound for Kikori. The officer, Max Malau, who has several health projects in Kikori and who travels there frequently, said the items like liquor, cigarettes, fertilisers, speakers, DVD players and pornographic materials were bound for Kikori where trading took place. “The crew member of Chinese logging ship MV Yang Yuan lied when they said they had no clue of the items in the ship,” Mr Malau said.

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21/5/08

UN chief Ban Ki-moon called yesterday for a “visionary” global deal to ban cluster bombs, as delegates from more than 100 countries opened a conference here aimed at outlawing the weapons. The 12-day talks in Dublin aim for an international pact to stop the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of all cluster munitions among signatories. Ireland’s Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said: “Together, we owe it to the survivors of cluster munitions to ease their pain and give them hope. We owe it to humanity to ensure there will be no more innocent civilian victims of cluster munitions.”

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Peter Alford; 20/8/08

An Australian woman who was raped by a US navy sailor six years ago has finally won compensation - but not justice, she says - in the form of a payment of three million yen ($30,120) from the Japanese Government. The payment, which should have been made by the rapist following a civil court judgment, comes instead from a little-known Ministry of Defence fund for compensating civilian victims of illegal behaviour by US military personnel in Japan. “This money doesn’t represent real justice to me,” the woman, “Jane”, told The Australian yesterday. “He should have paid that money, or the US military should have, not the Japanese Government.

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