GENEVA: Thirty-one countries still hold stockpiles of cluster munitions despite signing a treaty to ban them, according to a report by anti-arms lobby groups published on Friday. Britain, Germany and the Netherlands hold the largest stocks, said the report by Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action. Britain has 38.7 million sub-munitions, which are used in cluster bombs, Germany holds 33 million and the Netherlands has 26 million, the report said The three count among 96 countries that have inked the Convention on Cluster Munitions since it opened for signing last December. Seven countries have since ratified the treaty, which needs 30 ratifications to come into force. But while the signatory states of the treaty have committed to destroying the stockpiles, other countries holding significant stockpiles have not, according to campaign groups. The biggest volume of 730 million sub-munitions is held by the United States, which has not joined the treaty and is therefore not obliged to eliminate its stock. "The US is out of step with most of its major military allies," said Steve Goose, arms division director at Human Rights Watch.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
Comments