Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-256"
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"en.20081119.20.3-256"2
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"Mr President, today we are appealing to the EU countries who are not currently planning to sign the Convention against cluster munitions to do so. Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, alongside EU aspirants Serbia and Turkey, please join the other EU countries and more than a hundred states worldwide in signing this Convention.
For whom are we making this appeal? For Suraj Ghulam Habib of Herat in Afghanistan who, when six years old, lost both his legs when he found a cluster bomb he thought was a kind of food. He now finds it almost impossible to get to school or to play with his friends from within his wheelchair. For Mrs Chanhthava of Sepone District in Laos, who lost a leg and damaged her sight after she accidentally struck a cluster bomb while working to gather food for her family in the rice fields. She now has to send her daughter out to the same dangerous fields to collect the rice. For the 13-year-old Georgian boy, Beka Giorgishvili, who, this year, whilst at a friend’s house, became one of the newest victims as he was helping to pump up his friend’s new bicycle tyre. Beka lost part of his skull and shrapnel remains inside.
It is hypocrisy for EU countries to condemn Russian aggression in Georgia, yet fail to condemn the means of that aggression, which causes excessive harm to civilians wherever cluster munitions are used. It is also a hollow excuse for countries to seek to justify stockpiling cluster bombs as part of adhering to the landmines ban, when cluster munitions are equally deadly and have caused even greater humanitarian damage in the world.
My own Member State, the UK, has already started the destruction of some 30 million explosives, changed its export control regulations and directly contributed to the clearing of ordnance, including cluster munitions in Georgia. Europe is where these weapons were first used by German and Soviet forces in the Second World War, Europe currently stockpiles an estimated one billion bomblets, and it is Europe which should take the lead in the world in securing their obliteration."@en1
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