Senate Debates, Votes On Feinstein-Leahy Amendment
To Tighten Controls On U.S. Sales And Transfers
Of Cluster Bombs That Pose Lingering Threats To Innocent Civilians

WASHINGTON (Wednesday, Sept. 6) -- The U.S. Senate Wednesday voted on an amendment authored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) that would prevent U.S. tax dollars from being used to buy, use or transfer U.S.-made cluster bombs until the Pentagon adopts rules of engagement ensuring the weapons are not used near any large concentrations of civilians.  The amendment failed in the Senate vote, 30-70.

Leahy and Feinstein offered the amendment to the annual defense budget bill, which is now being debated on the Senate Floor.  Leahy is a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and of the panel’s Defense Subcommittee, which handles the Senate’s work in writing the annual defense budget bill.  Leahy also has long led in Congress on efforts to protect and help the innocent victims of war.  He also has been the leading U.S. official championing efforts to ban the use of anti-personnel landmines, which also claim thousands of innocent victims each year.

With the amendment, Feinstein and Leahy aim to prevent the hundreds of unnecessary civilian deaths and injuries caused every year by unexploded cluster bombs.  The Feinstein-Leahy Cluster Munitions Amendment would prevent funds from being spent to purchase, use, or transfer cluster bombs until the Defense Department has adopted rules of engagement to ensure that cluster bomb are not used in or near civilian areas. 

“For too long, innocent civilians, not enemy combatants, have suffered the majority of casualties from cluster munitions.  The recent experience in Lebanon is only the latest example of the appalling human toll of injury and death.  Strict rules of engagement are long overdue, and I hope the Pentagon will support any future efforts to ensure that our cluster munitions are not used in civilian areas,” said Leahy.

A cluster munition is a large bomb, rocket or artillery shell that contains hundreds of small submunitions, or individual bomblets.  In some cases, up to 40 percent of the bomblets fail to explode and therefore pose a significant danger to civilians long after conflict has ended.  Cluster bombs also expose U.S. military forces to grave danger as they advance in combat through areas containing thousands of unexploded bomblets.

Feinstein and Leahy cite Israel’s recent alleged use of cluster bombs in Lebanon as a factor in proposing this amendment.  Throughout southern Lebanon, more than 405 cluster bomb sites containing approximately 100,000 unexploded bomblets have been discovered.  Each site covers a radius of 220 yards. 

Thirteen people, including three young children, have been killed and 48 injured.  So far, more than 2,900 unexploded bomblets have been destroyed in Lebanon but it will take 12 to 15 months to complete the effort.

In addition to the most recent use of cluster bombs, Leahy and Feinstein say the impact of unexploded cluster bombs on civilian populations has also been devastating in other conflicts:

·        An estimated 1220 Kuwaitis and 400 Iraqi civilians have been killed since 1991.

·        In Iraq in 2003, 13,000 cluster bombs with nearly 2 million bomblets were used.  Combining the first and second Gulf Wars, the total number of unexploded bomblets in the region is approximately 1.2 million. 

·        In Afghanistan in 2001, 1228 cluster bombs with 248,056 bomblets were used.  Between October 2001 and November 2002, 127 civilians were killed, 70 percent of them under the age of 18.

·        In the first Gulf War, 61,000 cluster bombs were used containing 20 million bomblets.  Since 1993, unexploded bomblets have killed 1600 innocent men, women, and children, injuring more than 2500 others.

·        Between nine and 27 million unexploded cluster bombs remain in Laos from U.S. bombing campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s.  Approximately 11,000 people, 30 percent of them children, have been killed or injured since the war ended.   

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Leahy’s statement on the Feinstein-Leahy Cluster Munitions Amendment
Text of the Feinstein-Leahy Cluster Munitions Amendment