Cluster Bombs Cloud Prospects for Peace

PHNOM PENH, Allegations that Thailand used controversial cluster munitions during recent border clashes with Cambodia have become the latest wedge driving tensions between the two neighbours.

The disarmament advocacy group Cluster Munition Coalition earlier this month announced that it had confirmed the Thais used the weapons as part of February skirmishes between Thai and Cambodian troops around a disputed area near the Preah Vihear temple.

The group said this marked the first time such weapons have been deployed since a landmark treaty banning their use came into effect last year – though Thailand continues to dispute whether or not the weapons should be classified as cluster bombs.

The CMC said Thailand’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, acknowledged in an April meeting that Thai troops used 155mm Dual Purpose Improved Conventional Munitions, or DPICM, during the February clashes.

Laura Cheeseman, director of the CMC, said it was "appalling" that Thailand had resorted to using cluster munitions. "Thailand has been a leader in the global ban on antipersonnel mines and it is unconscionable that it used banned weapons that indiscriminately kill and injure civilians in a similar manner," Cheeseman said in a statement.

However, Thailand is refusing to classify the weapons as cluster bombs. Thai officials said soldiers used the weapons in response to Cambodian forces firing rockets into Thai territory. "(Thai) soldiers defended themselves when attacked by multiple rockets," government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn told IPS. "When the civilian targets in Thailand were attacked, they defended themselves by using a particular kind of weaponry, including (DPICM)."

Cluster munitions are designed to explode in mid-air over their targets, unleashing smaller bomblets over the blast radius. But critics have sought to outlaw the weapons, arguing high fail rates mean the bomblets often fail to explode on impact, leaving a deadly legacy for civilians long after fighting has stopped. The CMC said its members have examined two contaminated areas around the UNESCO-listed Preah Vihear temple and found multiple kinds of cluster bomblets, including M85-type DPICM submunitions.

A 2007 report by the group Norwegian People’s Aid found that failure rates for the Israeli-produced M85 submunitions were unacceptably high. Though equipped with self-destruct mechanisms meant to ensure no more than 1 percent of the bomblets fail to explode, the report estimated previous use of the weapons in Iraq and Lebanon resulted in ‘dud rates’ as high as 12 percent in some cases.

A typical 155mm projectile can carry 49 M85 bomblets, meaning that a single fired rocket could leave at least five unexploded submunitions over a three-hectare blast radius. Denise Coghlan, director of the group Jesuit Refugee Service in Cambodia, was part of a group that visited the Preah Vihear area shortly after the February fighting. She said two men were killed and another two people lost appendages after the cluster bombs exploded.

"I was really outraged that people were killed and that people were injured by cluster munitions," Coghlan told IPS. "This is such a flagrant breach of the new international law." Though Thailand continues to insist the DPICM are not cluster bombs, other observers have issued sharply worded criticisms nonetheless.

"Norway condemns all use of cluster munitions," Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jonas Gahr Støre said in a statement this month. "These weapons kill and maim civilians and have unacceptable humanitarian consequences long after they are used. (END)