Peace and Justice Post

Reflections of Fidel | Granma, Dec 1, 2008

IT is a difficult subject to explain, although it seems very simple. The U.S. Federal Reserve system was created in 1913 as the result of capitalism in full development. Salvador Allende, a man we all remember as from our era, had turned about 15 years old.

World War I broke out in 1914, when the heir prince to the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the heart of central and southern Europe, was assassinated in Sarajevo. Canada was still a British colony. The GB pound sterling had the privilege of being the currency used internationally. The basic metal used to make it was gold, as it had been for more than 1,000 years in the capital of the Roman empire of the east, Constantinople. Those who began the bloody battles against Muslims in the Near East, brandishing religious pretexts, were feudal knights of the Christian kingdoms of Europe, whose real purpose was to control trade routes and other mundane, more vulgar goals that could be addressed on another occasion.

The United States began to participate in World War I toward the end, in 1917, two years after the sinking of the Lusitania, which was carrying U.S. passengers who had departed from New York. It was sunk by torpedoes fired from a German submarine with absurd instructions to attack a ship flying the flag of a distant, rich and potentially powerful country that, under the cover of supposed neutrality, intended to find a pretext to participate in the war on the side of Britain, France and their allies. The attack took place on May 7, 1915, as [the ship] was crossing the strait between Ireland and England. In the 20 minutes it took to founder, very few passengers were able to abandon ship; the 1,198 people who were still aboard perished.

The growth of the U.S. economy after that war was maintained continuously, except for cyclical crises that were resolved by the Federal Reserve system (FED), without more serious consequences.

On October 24, 1929, remembered in U.S. history as “Black Thursday,” the economic crisis broke out. The Reserve Bank of New York, which is based on Wall Street, just like other banks and corporations — according to the right-wing theorist and renowned U.S. economist Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate in economics (1976), reacted “instinctively,” adopting the measures that he considered to be most correct: “of putting money into circulation.” The Reserve Bank in Washington, accustomed to the preeminence of its opinions, was able to finally impose the opposite idea. The secretary of the Treasury under President Hoover supported the Reserve Bank of Washington, and the one in New York ended up giving way. “But the worst was yet to come,” stated Friedman, who explains more clearly than any other eminent economist — some of them from the opposite tendency — the sequence of events, when he wrote, “Until the fall of 1930, the recession in economic activity, despite being serious, was not affected by financial difficulties or the petitions of depositors who were trying to withdraw their deposits. The character of the recession changed drastically when a series of bankruptcies in the Midwestern and southern United States weakened people’s confidence in banks and resulted in numerous attempts to convert bank deposits into cash.

“On December 11, 1930, the Bank of the United States closed. It was the critical date. It was the largest commercial bank ever to collapse in U.S. history.”

In the month of December 1930 alone, 352 banks closed their doors. “The FED could have reached a better solution by making a large-scale buyout on the market of public debt securities.

“In September 1931, the date on which Britain abandoned the gold standard, it followed a policy that was even more negative.

“The system reacted after two years of hard repression, increasing that type of interest to a level never reached in its history.”

We should take into account that Friedman is reflecting an opinion that still predominates in official U.S. circles almost 80 years later.

“In 1932, the FED, under pressure from Congress, ended its period of sessions and immediately canceled its buying program.

“The final episode was the bank panic of 1933.

“Fear intensified during the interregnum between Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected on November 8, 1932, but whose inauguration did not take place until March 4, 1933. The first did not wish to take any drastic measures without the cooperation of the new president, while Roosevelt, for his part, did not want to assume any responsibilities until he was sworn in.”

The episode reminds us of what is happening today with the president elected in the recent November 4 elections, less than a month ago, Barack Obama, who will succeed Bush on January 20, 2009. Only the period of interregnum has changed; in the 1930s, it was no more than 117 days, and currently it is no more than 77.

Right during the peak of the economic boom, according to Friedman, there were as many as 25,000 banks in the United States. At the start of 1933, the number had gone down to 18,000.

“When President Roosevelt decided to end the bank closure, 10 days after it had begun” — Friedman said — “something less than 12,000 banks were authorized to open their doors, to which only 3,000 were added later. Therefore, altogether, about 10,000 of the 25,000 banks existing in 1929 disappeared during those four years, via a process of bankruptcy, merger or liquidation.

“The closure of businesses, falling production and growing unemployment all fueled nervousness and fear.

“Once the depression was underway, it spread to other countries and, of course, there was a reflexive influence; another example of the realignment so omnipresence in a complex economy,” Friedman concludes.

The world of 1933 that he referred to in his book is nothing at all like today’s, which is totally globalized, comprising more than 190 states represented at the UN, whose inhabitants are all being threatened by dangers that scientists — even the most optimistic, cannot ignore, and that a growing number of people know about and agree on, including prominent U.S. politicians.

The echo of the repercussion of the current crisis can be seen in the desperate efforts of major world leaders.

The Xinhua agency reports that President Hu Jintao of the People’s Republic of China, a country that has experienced sustained, two-digit growth in recent years, warned yesterday that “China is under growing pressure because of its enormous population, limited resources and environmental problems.” It is the only country that we know has hard currency reserves of almost $2 trillion. The Chinese president lists “a series of essential steps for protecting the fundamental interests of the population and protecting the environment in the strategy of industrialization and modernization of China.” He said, finally, that “with the propagation of the financial crisis, world demand for products has been considerably reduced.”

With these words from the leader of the most populated country on the planet, it is not necessary to add more arguments concerning the profundity of the current crisis.

Fidel Castro Ruz

November 30, 2008

Will He Meet the Challenge?

Counterpunch, Dec 5 / 7, 2008

By YINON COHEN and NEVE GORDON

As Barack Obama enters the oval office he will face a series of daunting challenges. One of these is confronting the age old Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has been seriously, yet unsuccessfully, tackled by every American president since Jimmy Carter. The inability to reach a peaceful solution has not only had fatal repercussions for the people residing in Israel and the Occupied Territories, but has also been detrimental to Middle East stability and to vital US interests in the region.

In recent years, some of the hurdles facing those political leaders who want to reach a peace agreement based on the two-state solution have only grown. The Palestinians are in the midst of an internal fray between the old-guard of Fatah and the fundamentalist Hamas ideologues, and currently there is no agreed upon leadership with which one can negotiate. The Israeli political arena has also become much more polarized, and, it will be practically impossible for whichever party wins the upcoming elections to sign a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians, not least because the settler movement and its supporters will control a critical block in the Knesset.

Obama, however, has a crucial advantage over his predecessors. Several years of political negotiations (from the Madrid conference in 1991, through Oslo, Camp David, Taba, and Annapolis) alongside the publication of different initiatives (from the Geneva Initiative and the Saudi Plan to the Nussaiba and Ayalon Plan) have clarified what it would take to reach a peace settlement between the warring sides.

The two-state solution entails three central components.

1) Israel’s full withdrawal to the 1967 border with possible 1 per 1 land swaps so that ultimately the total amount of land that was occupied will be returned.

2) Jerusalem’s division according to the 1967 borders with certain land swaps to guarantee that each side has control over its own religious sites and large neighborhoods. Both these clauses entail the dismantlement of Israeli settlements and the return of the Jewish settlers to Israel.

3) The acknowledgment of the right of return of all Palestinians but with the following stipulation: While all Palestinians will be able to return to the fledgling Palestinian state, only a limited number agreed upon by the two sides will be allowed to return to Israel; those who cannot exercise this right or, alternatively, choose not to, will receive full compensation.

While the conditions that need to be satisfied in order to reach a peace agreement are well known and even though most political leader understand that the only way to provide real security for the two peoples is by signing a comprehensive agreement, years of negotiations have produced only limited results. The cruel irony is that the majority of Jews and Palestinians in the region support the two-state solution, but, nonetheless, the two parties cannot reach an agreement because sizable minorities in both camps reject this solution. These minorities have managed to hijack the respective political arenas and have succeeded in creating a deadlock that can only be overcome if the international community, and particularly the US, assumes a more interventionist role.

With determination and political boldness Obama can neutralize the rejectionist minorities and resolve this bloody conflict once and for all. We believe that he can achieve this objective if his administration adopts the following strategy: First, the White House needs to draft a proposal using the abovementioned guidelines. Second, the draft proposal should be submitted to the two sides so that each one can suggest minor alterations. Third, the Obama administration will have to hammer out a final proposal (i.e., the Obama plan). Finally, this proposal should be publicized and brought to a referendum in both Israel and the Occupied Territories, with the US and international community applying pressure by declaring that the two parties will be rewarded if they support the initiative and penalized if they do not. Thus, the majority of the people on each side, and not the local leadership or a rejectionist minority, will decide whether or not to accept the peace plan.

Obama’s political vision has engendered hope not only in the United States, but, as his appearance in Berlin and the post-election jubilations suggest, in the various populations of the world. Our expectation is that he will make good on his promise for change and introduce a courageous initiative that will bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. He has both an opportunity and a responsibility to do so.

Yinon Cohen is Yerushalmi Professor of Israel and Jewish Studies, Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York.

Neve Gordon is the chair of the Department of Politics and Government, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and is the author of Israel’s Occupation, University of California Press, 2008. His website is www.israelsoccupation.info

By Athar Parvaiz | Inter Press Service

SRINAGAR, Dec 5 (IPS) – Political leaders in Jammu and Kashmir, a bone of contention between India and Pakistan for more than 60 years, are aghast at last week’s carnage in the Indian port city of Mumbai, carried out by armed men who apparently sailed in from the Pakistani port of Karachi.

Many here believe that renewed hostility between the South Asian giants, set off by the sea-borne attacks in which 200 people died, may prove to be a setback for their peaceful movement for an independent or autonomous Kashmir.

“Violence is nowhere acceptable now; you have to hammer home your argument cogently, not through violent means, if you want the support of the international community,’’ Aktar Hussein, a student at the Kashmir University, told IPS.

At least 10 gunmen targeted the financial hub’s main railway station, two luxury hotel complexes, a Jewish centre and a hospital with automatic fire, grenades and explosives. Barricading themselves inside the two hotels and the Jewish centre, they fought off Indian commandos for more than three days from late on Nov. 26 to Nov. 29.

Counterterrorism officials in the United States have supported the contention of Indian authorities that the attackers were linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (soldiers of god) militant group, which is based in Pakistan but has been fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

And, on Tuesday, while on a visit to Pakistan, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Islamabad had been given sufficient evidence to take action.

Young people like Hussein recognise that the discourse over a settlement of the Kashmir issue changed dramatically after the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.

Demonstrably, for them, peaceful mass protests in the Srinagar valley — against the parcelling out of land to a Hindu shrine board — have not only gleaned positive results but also won international praise.

The peaceful phase of the movement against Indian rule began after an estimated 50,000 people died in an armed struggle that lasted for 18 years but began petering out after the 9/11 attacks.

“Kashmiris were just rejoicing over the discovery of an effective way of struggle when the terror strikes occurred in Mumbai… these could have a bearing on the resolution of Kashmir issue,’’ says Kashmir University professor Noor Ahmad Baba.

Almost unanimously, the terror strikes in Mumbai have evoked strong reactions from political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, with the leaders of both separatist and mainstream groups in the state condemning them.

Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the tallest of the hard line separatists, termed the strikes an ‘‘anti-human’’ act. “The perpetrators are the enemies of humanity,’’ he said and called for an internationally observed, independent probe into the attack.

Even Kashmiri militant groups based in the Pakistan-administered part of the territory have expressed shock at the attack. Salah-u-Din, who heads the United Jihad Council (UJC), a conglomerate of more than one dozen active militant outfits in Kashmir, termed the attacks as “reprehensible” in a statement.

“We would never allow any militant group in Kashmir to carry out such an inhuman attack,’’ Salah-u-Din said in a statement faxed from Muzzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan administered Kashmir where he is based.

The chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Mohammad Yasin Malik, called the terror strikes “a heinous crime against humanity” while talking with IPS over telephone from a hospital in the Indian capital, where he is undergoing treatment.

Jamaat-e-Islami, a religio-political organisation in Kashmir, called the attacks ‘’anti-Islamic.’’ “We condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. Our sympathies are with those who have lost their loved ones in these terror strikes.”

The leaders of mainstream political parties have condemned the attacks in more forcefully. “Such gory acts are not only outrageous, but inhuman as well,” said former chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed who heads the regional, People’s Democratic Party.

Another former chief minister, Farooq Abdullah, who is the patron of the National Conference, the other main regional party of Kashmir, declared that in no way were the strikes ‘’in the interest of Kashmiris and their freedom struggle.’’

“This (Mumbai attack) doesn’t seem to be the handiwork of militants who are active in Kashmir,” said one political observer who preferred to remain anonymous and refused to say anything more about it.

Indian Kashmir is presently undergoing staggered elections for the state assembly. Two of the seven phases, scheduled to culminate on Dec. 28, have already been completed and the third phase of polling is slated for Dec. 7.

The first two phases were remarkably peaceful and saw large voter turnouts, although the elections are being held in the backdrop of intra-regional friction and anti-India sentiments since June when the controversy over the land transfer erupted.

Observers say that if animosities between India and Pakistan worsen, it could hamper the rest of the election process. “How can this process go on in a sensitive region like Kashmir, if the tension doesn’t ease off between India and Pakistan?” says Noor Baba.

Both the common people and the political leadership of Kashmir favour friendly ties between India and Pakistan, acutely aware that the three wars they fought over the territory have not produced any settlement and have only hardened positions.

World media rashly celebrated the “historic” security pact that allows for US troops to stay in Iraq for three more years after the Iraqi parliament ratified the agreement on Thursday, 27 November. The approval came one week after the Iraqi cabinet did the same.

Thousands of headlines exuded from media outlets, largely giving the false impression that the Iraqi government and parliament have a real say over the future of US troops in their country, once again playing into the ruse fashioned by Washington that Iraq is a democratic country, operating independently from the dictates of US Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker and the top commander of US troops in Iraq, General Ray Odierno. The men issued a joint congratulatory statement shortly after the parliamentary vote, describing it as one that would “formalise a strong and equal partnership” between the US and Iraq.

Jonathan Steel of the British Guardian also joined the chorus. “Look at the agreement’s text. It is remarkable for the number and scope of the concessions that the Iraqi government has managed to get from the Bush administration. They amount to a series of U-turns that spell the complete defeat of the neoconservative plan to turn Iraq into a pro-Western ally and a platform from which to project US power across the Middle East.”

Even Aljazeera.net English seemed oblivious to the charade. It assuredly wrote that the agreement “will end the 2003 invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein. It is effectively a coming-of-age for the Iraqi government, which drove a hard bargain with Washington, securing a number of concessions — including a hard timeline for withdrawal — over more than 11 months of tough negotiations.”

Most attention was given to dates and numbers as if their mere mention were enough to compel the US government to respect the sovereignty of Iraq: 30 June 2009 is the date on which US forces will withdraw from Iraqi cities and January 2012 is the date for withdrawal from the entire country. Also duly mentioned is a hurried reference to opposition to the agreement represented in the “no” vote of the “followers of Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Shia leader,” which caused, according to the BBC “rowdy scenes of stamping, shouting and the waving of placards during the debate.”

The dismissal of the opposition as “followers” of this or that — portraying those who refuse to be intimidated by US pressure as a cultic, unruly bunch — also has its rewards. After all, only a real democracy can allow for such stark, fervent disagreements, as long as the will of the majority is honoured in the end.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh knew exactly how to capitalise on the buzzwords that the media was eagerly waiting to hear. The success of the vote would constitute a “victory for democracy because the opposition have done their part and the supporters have done their part.”

Of course, there is nothing worth celebrating about all of this, for it’s the same charade that the Bush administration and previous administrations have promoted for decades, in Iraq and also elsewhere. “Real democracy” in the Third World is merely a means to a specific end, always ensuring the dominion of US interests and its allies. Those who dare to deviate from the norm find themselves the subject of violent, grand experiments, with Gaza being the latest example.

What is particularly interesting about the Iraq case is that news reports and media analysts scampered to dissect the 18-page agreement as if a piece of paper with fancy wording would in any way prove binding upon the US administration which, in the last eight years, has made a mockery of international law and treaties that have been otherwise used as a global frame of reference. Why would the US government, which largely acted alone in Iraq, violated the Geneva Conventions, international law and even its own war and combat regulations, respect an agreement signed with an occupied, hapless power constituted mostly of men and women handpicked by the US itself to serve the role of “sovereign”?

It’s also bewildering how some important details are so conveniently overlooked; for example, the fact that the Iraqi government can sign a separate agreement with the US to extend the deadline for withdrawal should the security situation deem such an agreement necessary. Instead, the focus was made on “concessions” obtained by the Iraqis regarding Iraq’s jurisdiction over US citizens and soldiers who commit heinous crimes while “off duty” and outside their military bases. This precisely means that the gruesome crimes committed in prisons such as Abu Ghraib and the willful shooting last year of 17 Iraqi civilians by Blackwater mercenaries in Nisour Square in Central Baghdad is of no concern for Iraqis. And even when crimes that fall under Iraqi jurisdiction are reported, such matters are to be referred to a joint US-Iraqi committee. One can only assume that those with the bigger guns will always prevail in their interpretation of the agreement.

In fact, a major reason behind the delay in publishing the agreement in English (an Arabic version was first publicised) is the apparent US insistence on interpreting the language in a fashion that would allow for loopholes in future disagreements. But even if the language is understood with mutual clarity, and even if the Iraqi government were determined to stand its ground on a particular issue, who is likely to prevail: the US government with 150,000 troops on the ground and a massive imperial project whose failure will prove most costly to US interests in the Middle East, or the government of Nuri Al-Maliki, whose very existence is a US determination?

More than five years have passed since the US occupied Iraq, leaving in its wake a tragedy that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, destroyed civil society, thus allowing for the growth of one of the world’s most corrupt political regimes, and introducing the same terrorists to Iraq that the Bush administration vowed to defeat. Nothing has changed since then. The US attacked Iraq for its wealth and the strategic value of controlling such wealth. The Bush administration and their allies have tried many times to distract from this reality, using every political cover and charade imaginable. The facts remain the same, as does the remedy: The US must withdraw from Iraq without delay, allowing Iraqis to pick up the pieces and work out their differences as they have done for millennia.

Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers and journals worldwide. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle (Pluto Press, London).

Stop killing the Afghans

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould |  ZNet, Dec 5, 2008

Source: Counterpunch

One of Barack Obama’s first acts as president should be to instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture.

At Obama’s press conference on Dec. 1, he spoke of upholding America’s highest values as he introduced Eric Holder as his choice for attorney general. Holder insisted there was no tension between protecting the people of the United States and adhering to our Constitution.

A few months ago, Holder was even more explicit. “Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution,” he said. “We owe the American people a reckoning.”

The day of reckoning is fast upon us.

If Obama and Holder want to adhere to our Constitution and uphold our highest values, they must pursue those in the Bush Administration who violated that Constitution, broke our laws, and tarnished our values.

Read the words of Lt. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal for the Pentagon. “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” he concluded. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Despite Taguba’s words and reams of documentation supporting his statement, there has been little discussion about holding officials accountable for their design and implementation of the torture program.

We need to make it clear, just as we do in cases with the most minor offenses, that actions have consequences. To simply let those officials walk off the stage sends a message of impunity that will only encourage future law breaking. The message that we need to send is that they will be held accountable.

A popular refrain in Washington these days is that criminal prosecutions would be an unnecessary look backward. Some argue that in order for the new administration to move forward, presidential pardons should be granted and a Truth Commission assembled to investigate the circumstances that gave rise to the brutal interrogations and deaths of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites around the world.

But pardons would be the final refuge for an administration whose egregious violations of human rights have, for all too long, gone unpunished. And a Truth Commission is not applicable.

This is not Latin America; this is not South Africa. We are not trying to end a civil war, heal a wounded country and reconcile warring factions. We are a democracy trying to hold accountable officials that led our country down the road to torture. And in a democracy, it is the job of a prosecutor and not the pundits to determine whether crimes were committed.

Criminal prosecutions are not about looking to the past; they are about creating a future world without torture. They will be the mark of the new dawn of America’s leadership and our new era of accountability.

Prosecuting these officials would help the United States regain its moral standing in the world and to prove our commitment to upholding international human rights standards.

In his first nationally televised interview, President-elect Barack Obama made this promise: “I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture. And I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture.”

The best way to do that is to prosecute those who designed the torture policies.

Michael Ratner is president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of “The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.”

By Thalif Deen | Inter Press Service

PTAB submunitions piled up near Bagram, Afghanistan 2002. Part of a munition dump containing 60,000 tonnes of unexploded ordnance. Credit:John Rodsted

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 4 (IPS) – When the United Nations talks of “Israeli-occupied territories”, the conventional definition is that these disputed lands include the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — all of them annexed after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

But to most Lebanese, there are border villages inside southern Lebanon that are virtually “no-man’s land” because of the myriads of cluster bombs air-dropped by Israel during its four-week conflict with the Islamic militant organisation Hezbollah in 2006.

For all intents and purposes, says one Arab diplomat stretching the U.N. definition further, these heavily-mined border villages are also “Israeli-occupied territories”.

“The devastating military legacy left behind by Israel lives on in these Lebanese villages, parts of which remain uninhabitable because of cluster munitions and unexploded ordnance,” he adds.

But he is not sure how a new treaty banning cluster bombs, which was signed by 94 nations in the Norwegian capital of Oslo on Thursday, will help resolve the problem of “occupied territories” inside Lebanon.

The United Nations says that “millions” of cluster munitions — in which hundreds of small ‘bomblets’ are packed together — were dropped on more than 48 million square metres of Lebanese territory in July and August 2006, killing and injuring over 300 civilians.

And hundreds of thousands of munitions failed to explode on impact and remained on the ground, on rooftops, and in agricultural areas, killing mostly civilians.

In Laos, clearance operations have been going on for over 30 years after a conflict there left 75 million unexploded cluster bomblets strewn across the country, according to the U.N. Development Programme (UNDP).

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that exactly 11 years ago, governments, international organisations, parliamentarians and civil society gathered for the historic signing of the landmine convention which banned those anti-personnel weapons.

“That treaty added a new chapter to international humanitarian law, disarmament and non-proliferation, and is a prime example of how a shared sense of conviction and determination can translate into concrete measures that save lives and livelihoods,” he said in a statement read at the signing ceremony by Sergio Duarte, the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.

He said the new Convention on Cluster Munitions will not only prohibit the future use and proliferation of cluster weapons but also promote their very obsolescence.

“Moreover, the Convention’s far reaching provisions on victim assistance and clearance will improve the lives of survivors, families and communities that have been affected by cluster munitions,” he added.

The signing of the CCM is also a historic victory for the progressive governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that made it happen, says William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the Washington-based New America Foundation.

“While there is still much work to do — like getting major players like the United States, Russia and China on board — the treaty sets a norm against selling or using these weapons that will be hard to roll back,” he said.

But it is a hopeful sign, Hartung told IPS, “that President-elect Barack Obama has agreed to reconsider current U.S. policy with an eye towards possibly joining the cluster bomb ban.”

“And even short of signing on, there is much that the United States can do, from stopping exports, to curbing their use, to spending more to help clean up unexploded ‘bomblets’ that could approach de facto support for the ban,” he said.

The most important thing now is for activists and political leaders to view this as an historic first step that will be followed by vigorous efforts to get the major powers on board, Hartung added.

The CCM was adopted by 107 countries at a conference in Dublin, Ireland, in May this year, and comes into force six months after 30 states ratify it. The legally-binding treaty prohibits the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of cluster munitions.

According to the United Nations, at least 15 countries, and a number of non-state actors, mostly military groups, have used cluster munitions in at least 32 countries or territories. A total of 34 countries have produced more than 200 types of cluster munitions while billions of these are said to be stockpiled in 75 countries.

Jayantha Dhanapala, a former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, told IPS that the signing of the Convention by so many states eliminates an entire category of weapons and “is another major triumph for disarmament achieved through a unique coalition of civil society groups and nation states”.

“It is an indictment of the established framework for the negotiation of international disarmament treaties and on the major powers whose obstructionism has failed to stop the powerful groundswell of international public opinion,” he added.

“We have more mountains to climb especially with regard to the elimination of nuclear weapons and this victory, which includes victim assistance as an important element, should be an encouragement,” added Dhanapala.