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Conventional Weapons

rose to call attention to the recent proceedings of the United Nations Conference on Certain Conventional Weapons at Geneva; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, as the tide goes out, perhaps I may recommend to anyone who feels that their circulation is not stimulated enough when opening a debate to discover that they have left a vital document on the first or second floor and have to search for it during the gap between the substantive reply to the first Question on the Order Paper and the Motions which your Lordships have just heard. Your Lordships will be glad to learn that it was here all the time. I thank your Lordships in advance for taking part in this debate because I shall have no chance to do so at the end. I do not apologise for bringing the subject of cluster munitions to the fore for a second time this year, or possibly a fourth, because the matter is so urgent and pressing. I do apologise, however, for the terms of the Motion, which does not mention that it is about cluster munitions. Had it done so, and had this not been a Thursday morning, there would be a considerably longer speakers list. I declare an interest: I am just returned from the latest convention on conventional weapons at the United Nations. My attendance, and the cost of going to and from, was funded by the charity, Landmine Action. Its work is beyond praise, but, as a recipient of this support, I should leave it to others to sing those praises. The background to the convention is probably familiar to your Lordships. The United Nations convention had met to discuss the possibility of doing something about cluster munitions for five years when Norway decided that enough was enough, set up a separate organisation and invited all countries prepared to sign up to a complete ban internationally by 2008 to go to Oslo at the beginning of this year. It is important to say that the principal paragraph of the Oslo declaration was a commitment to conclude by 2008 a binding international instrument that will, "““prohibit the use … production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians””," and, crucially, establish a framework for co-operation and assistance that ensures adequate provision of care and rehabilitation to survivors and affected communities. These are the terms on which many of us wish to see a conclusion to the proceedings in Geneva. However, what happened was rather different. I should explain the importance of that to readers of this debate. I know that your Lordships are familiar with this, so I shall be brief. Broadly, in layman’s terms—the definition will be crucial to the treaty—cluster munitions are containers, delivered by artillery, rocket fire or aircraft. They contain large numbers—sometimes more than 400—of sub-munitions which are designed to explode on impact with the ground and cause damage to personnel or vehicles. They are area weapons. The commander who releases them does so in the expectation that within an area—in the case of the M85, an area the size of at least two football pitches—there will be tanks, people or soft skin vehicles that they want to get rid of and which are a threat to them. If cluster munitions do not explode, they become small landmines. They are the size of my fist roughly. Because of the very high failure rate, latterly a secondary system has been introduced into many of them, which is designed to self-destruct within five seconds after impact if the bomb has not already gone off. I shall go into failure rates later. However, it is important to remember that they also have a failure rate. All ammunition has a failure rate, from a 303 round to a howitzer round. If the secondary mechanism fails, and experience proves that it does so on a considerable scale, the bomb left on the ground is just as dangerous and far more difficult to defuse. That is one of the reasons why so many landmine clearing experts are losing their lives around the world at present. Munitions designed to self-destruct and those which have other mechanisms to make them more accurate are excluded from a general definition known as ““dumb/smart munitions””. Her Majesty’s Government refuse to accept the term and I rather congratulate them on that. Referring to cluster munitions as ““smart”” would be an oxymoron, but we do not have a general term for them yet; we need one. It would be possible to quote many sources on failure rates and come to different conclusions, but fortunately the Quadripartite Committee of another place states the following at paragraph 367 of its report: "““‘Dumb’ cluster munitions have a failure rate which is estimated to be between 25% and 30%, and even ‘smart’ cluster bombs may have a failure rate which may be between 5% and 10%. In other words, even in cluster bombs which have a relatively sophisticated self-destruct mechanism, up to one in 10 bomblets (or ejected sub-munitions) that do not explode will lie live on the battlefield. The potential to inflict death and injury on innocent non-combatants entering the field after the engagement is therefore substantial””." Going to the scale on which this happens, Handicap International, another charity of very great value, has said that in Lebanon it is estimated that at least 1,159,000 sub-munitions have been delivered by rocket and 2,800,000 by artillery, and those figures exclude all air-delivered weapons completely. I leave it to noble Lords to work out even 5 per cent of those numbers in relation to the size of that country. At the time of writing, the number of casualties reported as definitely due to these things was 587, but that is going to mount. Eleven of those casualties are de-miners. The de-miners are incredibly brave people. I had the privilege of meeting in Lima, at an earlier stage of the Oslo process, a de-miner of possibly Albanian origin who had simply stirred the grass at the end of a runway which had been under attack, having been told that some of these munitions were there. He never saw the thing that blew up, but it removed all his limbs. He now has no hands and no feet, indeed nothing below the knee. I can almost hear some of your Lordships say, ““Spare us the bleeding stumps””, but it is bleeding stumps that we are actually talking about, thousands if not millions of them. The scale to dwarf all is that of Vietnam. By 1975, 294 cluster munitions—the containers, not the bomblets—had been delivered to the equivalent of every square kilometre of Vietnam, which works out at roughly two sub-munitions per head of the population of that country. It is also tragic to note that the ratio of those killed shows that more than twice as many civilians died as did military personnel. Is it not surprising that the Americans lost the war, and is there not a lesson for us there? Therefore almost in parenthesis, I ask the Minister whether our use of these weapons on the fringes of Basra affected our reception by the local civilian population. All this is certainly horrific, but is it militarily useful? I have already referred to Landmine Action, which states on page 9 of its report that: "““Data on mobile target hits in Kosovo is disputed. However, an analysis of damage assessments in the bombing data released by NATO relating to cluster strikes on mobile targets in Kosovo finds only 75 out of 269 missions positively claiming some degree of damage to the target””." Incidentally, in that campaign there was a total of 234,123 sub-munitions confirmed minimum, of which a considerable number were dropped by us and the rest by our allies. This makes the blood run a little cold. On the military issues there are others—notably the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who is to address your Lordships later—who know more about this than I do, but already after the first Gulf War certain American senior soldiers, particularly those connected with 3 Infantry Division, were calling these campaign losers, not because of their effect on the civilian population, which would be disastrous for their eventual aim, but on their own troops because they could not go on foot through ground on which they had deployed their weapons. Every time they came to where they had deployed any weapons they had to get into their helicopters. Consequently they arrived late on objective. I ask your Lordships to consider their impact, not only on people in the battlefield at the time of the battle but on a large number of civilians afterwards. We cannot hear the groans of the wounded, for whom the loss of a limb is the loss of a livelihood; we cannot hear the tears of the widows and orphans who have lost the means of subsistence; we cannot hear the frustration of those who want to carry on their commercial activities but cannot because the roads are not safe; we cannot hear the farmers who dread to till their fields because they do not know what has been sown in them. People in Vietnam fear them still; they are losing up to 100 civilians a year as a result of these things. I do not need to say much more to convince your Lordships about the horror of these weapons. That is no doubt why the UN Secretary-General received an invitation and a welcome to the convention meeting last week in Geneva. He urged states to, "““address the horrendous humanitarian, human rights and developmental effects of cluster munitions””." I pause on the word ““developmental”” to reflect how extraordinarily well qualified the Minister is to respond to this debate. From the moment he founded the Economist development report, through his work at the World Bank on the United Nations millennium development goals, to his work as administrator of the United Nations development programme, as the chef de cabinet to the Secretary-General and eventually as a deputy secretary, he has been committed to development for the whole of his career. I hope he will be able to answer with that in mind, untrammelled by words of caution from the officials’ box or from his Secretary of State. The Minister will be familiar with the extraordinary circumstances in which I found myself last week in the United Nations building, the Palais de Nations, a vast amphitheatre full of people who, for hour upon hour, were straining to change two words in an unimportant preliminary document. Anything important was happening in the cafeteria or in small rooms, and I had the privilege of seeing the French and Russians grouped like a rugby scrum around a small round table. It was impossible to hear anything they were saying, which was most frustrating. That brings me to the Russians and the fact that, until they became active, there seemed to be a general agreement available on a fairly positive result to all this. However, the chill wind from Siberia flowed into the corridors and it wilted. I shall tell your Lordships in a moment what we got as a result. I would like to know from the Minister whether I am right that our own diplomatic efforts are constrained within the terms of the European leadership. Apparently, we have to toe its line in certain respects. If the presidency adopts a line, we have to follow it. Does that extend to our role in the Security Council? I hope that it does not. The United Nations proceeds by consensus. Members of this House proceed often enough by consensus to hold it up as a virtue, but I see it in as a terrible threat, because it enables anybody to stop something in its tracks, which is just about what happened. The text, as agreed by consensus on 13 November, stated: "““The meeting of the High Contracting Parties to the CCW decides that the GGE will negotiate a proposal””—" the fight to include the word ““negotiate””, showing that something positive was being done, is immediately neutralised by ““a proposal””— "““to address urgently the humanitarian impact of cluster munitions, while striking a balance between military and humanitarian considerations””." My noble friend on the Front Bench will undoubtedly do that, although I think that he will get the balance marginally wrong. The text continues: "““The GGE—" that is, the group of government experts— "““should make every effort to negotiate this proposal as rapidly as possible and report… in November 2008””." I skip to the programme for the experts. They will meet from 14 to 18 January. It is urgent business, this: their next meeting is on 7 July. That is where I would like them to see the bleeding stumps and to hear the cries of the wounded and the bereaved. Even that, several states—Brazil, Pakistan, India, South Korea and the United States—indicated that they would not support, nor would they negotiate a mandate if it was explicitly aimed at establishing a prohibition or if it had a deadline. The Russians asked to be read into the record a long declamation of what they would not stand, including anything that had any commercial or economic effect. At that point, I thought that were in Alice in Wonderland territory. It was therefore encouraging to hear the Prime Minister say at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet: "““Small arms kill every 90 seconds so as we call for an Arms Trade Treaty, Britain is willing to extend export laws to control extra-territorial broking and trafficking of small arms, and potentially other weapons. And having led the way by taking two types of cluster munitions out of service—" on which I and my colleagues offer warm congratulations— "““we want to work internationally for a ban on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of those cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians””." If noble Lords read that alongside the Oslo declaration, they will see that the Oslo process includes exactly what the Prime Minister stated, with added to it humanitarian treatment for those affected and destruction of the stockpiles. What better commendation could there be to the next meeting of the Oslo process in Vienna, to which I am delighted to say that the noble Lord—I am tempted to call him a noble friend, but that is dangerous ground in this Chamber—will go from our country? I have possibly said enough to persuade your Lordships that these are obscene weapons, whose effects are unacceptable and unavoidable, as one sees from the deaths among mine clearers as well as others, and that we should in all humanity stop using them at once. Our country is leading the way—I am proud of that—but what I would like to hear from the Minister today is an unequivocal undertaking that the Government will pursue this to the end in the Oslo process, and will find as few weasel words as possible for the final declaration so that everything that does not work is scrubbed out. We are talking about future generations. How true was it said that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children and the children’s children unto the third and fourth generation. It is on their behalf that I draw your Lordships’ attention to the Motion. I beg to move for Papers.