Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-16-Speech-3-500-000"
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"en.20111116.25.3-500-000"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, as Mr Gahler has just explained, cluster munitions are terrible, fiendish instruments of death for the civilian population. Banning them is therefore a battle for civilisation to which this House has been committed for some time.
The entry into force of the Oslo Convention was a major success, but now, little more than a year later, we are faced with a dangerous attempt to undermine its outcomes through an additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons – the review of which is currently being negotiated in Geneva – which would again allow the use of cluster munitions. This is a protocol that must not and cannot be signed by countries that have already signed up to the Oslo Convention, because, as you said yourself, Commissioner, it is clearly incompatible with the Convention and would open up a dangerous loophole, not least for those other countries that want to continue to produce, stockpile and use these types of munitions. Moreover, it would create a very serious precedent and would be a blow to international law.
The argument by those who say that the protocol would in any case improve the situation, because it would be signed by countries that have not signed the Oslo Convention, sounds decidedly specious to us, and on this point we would perhaps have liked to hear a rather clearer and less equivocal statement from Ms Ashton’s representative. Protocol VI would undermine the Convention because it would allow for the use of munitions produced after 1980, which form the great majority of them; it foresees a long transition period; it would allow for the use of types of cluster bomb that are extremely dangerous to civilians; and it would not set out any clear obligation to destroy individual countries’ stockpiles.
It is therefore crucial that all the Member States do not support the entry into force of this protocol and that the High Representative commits herself to ensuring that all the countries in the Union adopt a clear, united position in favour of a definitive ban on cluster munitions. The joint resolution that we are about to adopt on this issue is an important political signal, and we are certain that it will be adopted in its entirety by a large majority."@en1
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