Cluster munitions treaty leaves US behind

A campaign to rid the world of cluster munitions has still to rope in the U.S. government, a major producer and stockpiler of the deadly payload, on the eve of a key global conference in Laos to ban its production and use. The mixed messages that Washington has been sending are expected to hover over the historic cluster munitions conference to be held Nov. 9-12 in Laos, a poverty-stricken South-east Asian country still grappling with the legacy of the bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes four decades ago. Thus far, there are little signs that a U.S. government delegation will be attending the meeting as observers. "We are hoping they (the U.S. government) will send a delegation even at the last moment," says Thomas Nash, coordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a global network of civil society groups that have thrown their weight behind the world's newest disarmament treaty, the Cluster Munitions Convention. "The U.S. government is well aware of the problem in Laos," Nash told IPS ahead of the first international conference that follows the U.N. disarmament treaty's coming into force in August 2010. The inaugural meeting of the state parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, as it is formally known, is expected to bring delegates from over 100 countries and activists from nearly 400 non-governmental organizations to the Lao capital, Vientiane. Washington's absence is of little surprise in light of the distance that the U.S. government has put between itself and this latest international law, which is meant to save lives that continue to be lost long after cluster munitions have been dropped.