Director Calls For Cluster Bomb Ban

Irish film director Neil Jordan is to introduce a Dublin film to be screened in time to coincide with a major international conference on cluster bombs.

Unacceptable Harm, directed by Chris Anderson, depicts the horrific human impact of the munitions used in war zones across the world.

Cluster bomb victims and campaigners will attend the event, which will see the film aired on a giant screen in Dublin's Meeting House Square.

The 12-day diplomatic conference at Croke Park, Dublin, is seeking a global treaty banning cluster bombs.

Campaigners against cluster bombs say the main manufacturers and stockpilers of the munitions will be forced to accept a ban if one is agreed at a two-week conference which opened at Croke Park in Dublin today.

Already 130 countries are working to agree a treaty that would be widely supported.

However, the weapons' main producers and stockpilers are against any such treaty move and have boycotted the conference.

Nations including China, India and Pakistan who manufacture the munitions, along with United States, Russia and Israel who continue to use the devastating devices failed to provide a representative. Meanwhile, other nations including Britain have asked for exemptions on certain types of the bombs.

On Tuesday night, dozens of peace campaigners gathered at the Croke park stadium to express their opposition to cluster bombs, which indiscriminately scatter caches of individual 'bomblets' over a wide areas. They bombs are notorious for the serious danger they pose to civilians, and are also known to lie dormant until disburbed years after a conflict ends much in the same way as land mines.

(DW)