Tuesday 3 May 2011

Labor foiled bomb treaty

Australia secretly worked with the United States to weaken a key international treaty to ban cluster bombs, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.
Despite taking a high-profile stance against cluster munitions - condemned as the cause of large numbers of civilian casualties - Australia was privately prepared to pull out of international negotiations for a global ban of the weapons if this threatened ties with US forces.
The US continues to claim cluster munitions are ''a legitimate and useful weapon'', including for use in Afghanistan, and has affirmed that it will not sign the treaty to ban the bombs.
The disclosure comes as Federal Parliament prepares to consider a bill to ratify Australia's signature of the cluster munitions convention.
The draft legislation has attracted sharp criticism from non-government organisations for not meeting the spirit of the treaty to ban the weapons.
Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic complained the legislation could be interpreted to ''allow Australian military personnel to load and aim the gun, so long as they did not pull the trigger''.
Diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Canberra passed on to to WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age reveal that, in 2007, Kevin Rudd's newly elected government immediately told the US it was prepared to withdraw from the negotiations if key ''red line'' issues were not addressed - especially the inclusion of a loophole to allow signatories to the convention to co-operate with military forces still using cluster bombs...