Goff welcomes troops back from Lebanon Posted: 09 Feb 2008 06:09 PM CST Defence Minister Phil Goff was at Auckland International Airport this weekend to welcome home New Zealand Defence Force personnel from munitions clearing duties in the Lebanon. "Over the past 12 months our defence force troops from the Army and Navy have done a superb job there," Phil Goff said. "They have cleared nearly a third of a million square metres of land and destroyed more than 1800 unexploded cluster bombs and munitions. "This means that local people in the area where they have been working can now go about their lives without fear that they or their children will be killed or maimed by unexploded ordinance. "It is a tragedy that long after the conflict ended in Lebanon in 2006, because of the huge number of unexploded cluster munitions, more than 173 civilians have been injured and maimed and 20 killed. More than a third of these casualties were children," Mr Goff said. "The work of NZDF personnel in Lebanon builds on a proud tradition of Kiwis clearing mines and munitions in Laos, Cambodia, Mozambique and Afghanistan. "While this work is important, what we really need to do is move towards prevention as a solution, prohibiting the use of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The Ottawa Convention a decade ago is an example of how the world has been able to make progress towards banning the use of landmines. "Next week's conference on cluster munitions in Wellington will be an important contribution by New Zealand towards reducing the harm caused by cluster munitions as we try to broker agreement between more than 100 countries who will debate how best to achieve this," Phil Goff said.
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Wellington conference to bring cluster munitions solution a step closer Posted: 09 Feb 2008 06:08 PM CST Wellington is gearing up for an important international conference that will bring the world substantially closer to a new treaty on cluster munitions, Disarmament and Arms Control Minister Phil Goff said today. "This conference, from 18 to 22 February, is a significant undertaking for the New Zealand Government, and underlines our commitment to taking strong action against these weapons," Mr Goff said. "New Zealand, in hosting this major event, is making an important contribution to achieving an ambitious vision of a ban on cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. "Long after a conflict has ended civilians continue to bear the deadly legacy of these weapons. Many cluster munitions fail to explode on impact and lie dormant after a conflict has ended until unwittingly stumbled upon, often by children, to devastating effect. The tragic consequences of the legacy of a million unexploded bomblets in Lebanon from the recent war there bears witness to this," Mr Goff said. The Wellington Conference has attracted registrations from over 100 states and around 400 delegates, including participants from non government organisations and key international and UN agencies. "I am particularly encouraged by the high number of registrations from the Pacific and Southeast Asia, including from those states that continue to suffer cluster munitions contamination," Mr Goff said. "I am also pleased to see that a large number of states producing and stockpiling cluster munitions intend to participate in Wellington. Their agreement to sign up to a treaty will obviously be important to ensure the maximum practical impact of a legally binding instrument to stop unacceptable harm to civilians," Mr Goff added. "One of the outcomes of the Wellington Conference will be a declaration to which states will subscribe prior to formally negotiating the new convention in a Diplomatic Conference in Dublin in May. States will be able to subscribe to the declaration in Wellington, or subsequently in the lead-up to Dublin," Mr Goff said. The Wellington Conference is the fourth global conference of the Oslo Process, which aims to conclude a new convention banning cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians by the end of this year. Previous meetings of the Oslo Process were held in Norway (February 2007), Peru (May 2007) and Austria (December 2007), with regional meetings in Serbia, Costa Rica and Belgium.
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