Senators Eye Curbs on Cluster Bombs, Widening Matter beyond Israel’s Use

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0227-07.htm

Senators Eye Curbs on Cluster Bombs, Widening Matter beyond Israel’s Use
by Elana Schor


Several Senate Democrats are renewing their push to curb the U.S. military’s use of weaponry responsible for civilian casualties in conflicts around the world — notably during the summer war between Israel and Lebanon — a proposal that has split the party’s presidential frontrunners.

Human rights groups long have lobbied to curtail the use of cluster bombs, which disperse “bomblets” over wide areas that can cause civilian deaths years after they are dropped. Democratic lawmakers joined the cause last fall amid growing controversy over Israel’s firing of older U.S.-supplied cluster bombs into Lebanon.

Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) offered a bill earlier this month that allows U.S. sales and transfers only of newer bombs with low error rates, expanding on a cluster-curbing amendment they offered last year.

Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) backed that plan while his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sens. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.), Joseph Biden (Del.) and Chris Dodd (Conn.), opposed it – a vote that looms as potential attack ad fodder in a 2008 campaign that is kicking off and going negative especially early.

“Perhaps unfortunately, the issue of cluster munitions came about so prominently by Israel’s use or misuse of cluster munitions in its conflict with Hezbollah,” Colby Goodman, a program manager at Amnesty International, said. “It was seen by some as a focus on criticizing Israel, but that wasn’t the intent.”

Bomblets have killed thousands of civilians in the Balkans, Afghanistan, Vietnam and during the current Iraq war. Yet international criticism of the estimated 100,000 Israeli bombs that failed to detonate in Lebanon have led many to associate Washington’s No. 1 ally in the Middle East with the weapons, complicating the task for Democrats who support Feinstein-Leahy while cozying up to Jewish-American voters.

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