The US State Department has completed a preliminary report on whether Israel misused US-made cluster bombs in civilian areas of Lebanon.
State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper said on Saturday the report will have been forwarded to Congress today, but declined to disclose the findings, emphasizing that they are preliminary.
"We take our obligations under the Arms Control Act seriously," said Cooper. "Our forwarding to Congress of a preliminary assessment is an indication of that. The Israeli government is also taking quite seriously their responsibility in providing information," Cooper said. "We are not making a final judgment."
The State Department is required to notify Congress of even preliminary findings of possible violations of the act cited by Cooper.
The New York Times reported on its Internet site on Saturday evening that the report will say Israel may have violated agreements with the US by its use of US-supplied cluster munitions during last year's war.
The paper described disagreement among midlevel officials at the Defense Department and the State Department, with some in both departments arguing that Israel violated US prohibitions on using cluster munitions against population areas.
Others in both departments argued that the weapons were used in self-defense to stop Hezbollah rocket attacks and that, at worst, only a technical violation may have occurred.
A congressional investigation found Israel improperly used US-made cluster bombs during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Former US president Ronald Reagan's administration then imposed a six-year ban on further sales of the weapons to Israel.
Such sanctions are largely symbolic since Israel also makes its own cluster munitions.
Relief organizations and the UN mine office have reported finding evidence that Israel used three types of US-made cluster bombs during the 34-day war with Hezbollah militants, during which both sides fired rockets into populated areas.
The UN mine office has said it had found hundreds of bomblets of the types made by the US among unexploded ordnance recovered in nearly 250 locations in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli army has said all weapons it uses "are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards."
Israel said it was forced to hit civilian targets in Lebanon because Hezbollah fighters were using villages as bases for rocket launchers aimed at Israel. At least 850 Lebanese and 157 Israelis died in the fighting.
The Bush administration warned Israel to avoid civilian casualties, but refrained from direct criticism of Israeli tactics.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS