FY 2009 Omnibus Bill Includes Leahy-Feinstein
Provision To Prohibit Sale Or Transfer Of Most U.S. Cluster Munitions
Leahy Wants Export Ban To Prompt Pentagon Review Of U.S. Policy
(THURSDAY, March 12) -- U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) Thursday announced that the Fiscal Year 2009
omnibus appropriations bill includes a provision they authored to
prohibit the sale or transfer of cluster munitions that cause
unacceptable harm to civilians. The omnibus bill was signed into law by
President Obama on Wednesday.
The provision was included as part of the State Department and Foreign
Operations section of the Omnibus Appropriations Bill. Leahy
chairs the Appropriations subcommittee on the State Department and
Foreign Operations, which handled the Senate’s work in writing that
section of the bill.
“This is a key step for the United States and it reinforces the efforts
of other countries to stop the carnage caused by cluster munitions,”
said Senator Leahy. “Like Congress’s initiative to ban the export
of anti-personnel landmines, this can be a catalyst to prompt a review
by the Pentagon of U.S. policy, with a view to rapidly ending the use of
cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to innocent civilians.”
Leahy also has long been the leading U.S. officeholder pressing for an
end to the use of anti-personnel landmines. He followed a similar
course in his crusade against landmines, enacting the world’s first ban
on the export of anti-personnel landmines in 1992, which began a series
of actions that eventually led to an international treaty to ban
anti-personnel landmines.
Feinstein said, “This is an important legislative victory. It
sends a signal to the rest of the world that the U.S. government will
not sell or transfer dangerous cluster bombs to our allies – unless we
can be assured that the munitions will pose no direct threat to civilian
communities. I applaud Senator Leahy for his leadership in getting
this sensible provision enacted – and I hope that we will be able to
quickly follow suit with another bill we have sponsored to permanently
restrict the use of these weapons by U.S. forces, especially in areas
where civilians are known to live and work.”
Specifically, the Leahy-Feinstein measure requires that no U.S. military
funds will be used for the sale or transfer or cluster bombs, unless:
-
the cluster bombs have a failure rate of 1 percent or less; and
-
the sale or transfer agreement specifies that the cluster bombs will
be used only against clearly defined military targets and not where
civilians are known to be present.
Currently, the arsenal of the U.S. military contains 5.5 million cluster
bombs, or 728 million bomblets – many of which have a failure rate of 1
percent or higher.
Previously, a one-year ban on the sale and transfer ban of these
dangerous weapons was folded by Leahy into the Fiscal Year 2008 omnibus
appropriations bill.
Leahy and Feinstein also recently introduced a bill to set similar
standards for the use of cluster munitions by U.S. military forces.
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