Pentagon aims to reduce danger of unexploded cluster bombs

WASHINGTON — Faced with growing international pressure, the Pentagon is changing its policy on cluster bombs and plans to reduce the danger of unexploded munitions in the deadly explosives.

The policy shift, which is outlined in a three-page memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would require that after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate.

Limiting the amount of live munitions left on the battlefield would lessen the danger to innocent civilians who have been killed or severely injured when they accidentally detonate the bombs.

Also, by next June the Defense Department will begin to reduce its inventory of cluster bombs that do not meet the new safety requirements.

The new Defense Department plan comes more than a month after 111 nations, including many of America's key NATO partners, adopted a treaty outlawing all current designs of cluster munitions. The agreement also required that stockpiles be destroyed within eight years.

Opponents have complained that the Pentagon has moved too slowly to reduce the cluster munitions from its inventory.

Cluster bombs scatter hundreds of smaller explosives over a large area, where those bomblets can sit for years until they are disturbed and explode.

U.S. leaders boycotted the May talks, as did Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan, all leading cluster-bomb makers who cite the military value of the deadly explosives.

At the time, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, a Pentagon spokesman, said the elimination of cluster bombs from the U.S. stockpile "would put the lives of our soldiers and those of our coalition partners at risk."

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who has led efforts to outlaw cluster munitions, said the Pentagon's move is a step back. A defense policy issued by then-Defense Secretary William Cohen in early 2001, Leahy said, called for a similar reduction in submunitions from the cluster bombs by 2005.

"Now the Bush administration's 'new' policy is to wait another 10 years," said Leahy, calling it "another squandered opportunity for U.S. leadership." He said that in wake of the international treaty agreement, the Pentagon's plan to wait another decade before requiring the 99 percent detonation rate cannot be justified.

The use of cluster bombs has seen opposition in Congress, which last year passed a one-year ban on U.S. exports of such munitions to other countries. It is expected that the ban, which received bipartisan support, will be extended again by Congress.

The new Pentagon policy appears to plan for a possible end to that ban. The memo states that until 2018, the Defense Department would seek to transfer cluster munitions that don't meet the new 1 percent failure rate to other foreign governments. Any transfer would require that the foreign government not use them after 2018, and the sale would have to be "consistent with U.S. law," according to the memo.

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