[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 3, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Page S4973]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. FEINSTEIN (for herself, Mr. Leahy, Mr. Cardin, Mr. 
        Sanders, Mr. Feingold, and Mr. Brown):
  S.J. Res. 37. A joint resolution expressing the sense of Congress 
that the United States should sign the Declaration of the Oslo 
Conference on Cluster Munitions and future instruments banning cluster 
munitions that cause unaccapetable harm to civilians; to the Committee 
on Foreign Relations.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I am pleased to join with my friend from 
California, Senator Feinstein, in sponsoring this joint resolution 
calling on the administration to sign the Convention on Cluster 
Munitions when it is open for signature in December.
  This treaty is the product of a year of negotiations among many of 
our closest allies and other nations that came together to prohibit the 
use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
  I regret that the United States did not participate in the 
negotiations. The Pentagon continues to insist that cluster munitions 
are necessary, but the country with the world's most powerful military 
should not be on the sidelines while others are trying to protect the 
lives and limbs of civilians in war.
  Any weapon, whether cluster munitions, landmines or even poison gas, 
has some military utility. But anyone who has seen the indiscriminate 
devastation cluster munitions cause over a wide area understands the 
unacceptable threat they pose for civilians. These are not the laser 
guided weapons that were shown destroying their targets during the 
invasion of Baghdad.
  And there is the insidious problem of cluster munitions that do not 
explode as designed, and remain as active duds, like landmines, until 
they are triggered by whoever comes into contact with them. Often it is 
an unsuspecting child, or a farmer.
  This resolution follows an amendment I sponsored which prohibits U.S. 
sales and exports of cluster munitions that do not meet strict 
criteria, which became law as part of the Consolidated Appropriations 
Act, 2008. These criteria are no different from what the Pentagon set 
for itself 7 years ago for new procurements of cluster munitions, 
applied also to those in existing U.S. stockpiles. Senator Feinstein 
and I have also introduced legislation that would apply these same 
criteria to the use of cluster munitions. That legislation now has 20 
cosponsors.
  I want to express my appreciation to the Government of Norway for its 
leadership in initiating the process that led to the agreement on the 
treaty in Dublin, and to the Cluster Munitions Coalition, a group of 
some 200 nongovernmental organizations that worked diligently in 
support of the treaty.
  I traveled to Dublin last week to meet with delegates to the 
negotiations, including the president of the Conference Daithi 
O'Ceallaigh. He did a masterful job of guiding the discussions to a 
successful conclusion.
  There are some who have dismissed this effort as a ``feel good'' 
exercise, since it does not have the support of the United States and 
other major powers such as Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Israel. 
These are the same critics of the Ottawa treaty banning antipersonnel 
landmines, which the U.S. and the other countries I named have also 
refused to sign. But that treaty has dramatically reduced the number of 
landmines produced, used, sold and stockpiled, and the number of mine 
victims has fallen sharply. Any government that contemplates using 
landmines today does so knowing that it will be condemned by the 
international community. I suspect it is only a matter of time before 
the same is true for cluster munitions.
  The administration insists that the Convention on Certain 
Conventional Weapons, known as the CCW, is the right place to negotiate 
limits on cluster munitions because all countries are represented. I 
don't doubt their intentions, but it is what they said about landmines, 
and nothing happened because Russia and China were opposed. The same is 
likely for cluster munitions. It is a way to make it appear as if you 
are doing something, when you are not.
  It is important to note that the U.S. today has the technological 
ability to produce cluster munitions that would not be prohibited by 
the treaty. What is lacking is the political will to expend the 
necessary resources. There is no other excuse for continuing to use 
cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians.
  Finally, I want to thank Senator Feinstein who has shown a real 
passion for this issue and has sought every opportunity to protect 
civilians from these weapons.

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