Antonio Guterres supports the relevant convention, the office of the Secretary General of the World Organization noted
UN, July 7. /tass/. The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) Antonio Guterres supports the Convention on the Prohibition of Cluster Munitions. This was stated on Friday at a briefing by the deputy official representative of Guterres, Farhan Haq, commenting on US media reports that Washington will provide Kiev with this type of weapons. According to Haq, the UN Secretary General opposes the use of cluster munitions on the battlefield.
"The Secretary-General supports the Convention on the Prohibition of Cluster Munitions," Haq said, recalling that it was adopted 15 years ago. According to him, Guterres wants countries to comply with the provisions of this convention. "Naturally, he doesn't want cluster munitions to be used on the battlefield," Haq said.
Earlier, The Washington Post newspaper said that American leader Joe Biden approved the supply of cluster munitions to Ukraine.The US administration made this decision after several months of discussions about whether to supply Kiev with ammunition banned in most countries of the world. According to the newspaper, we are talking about M864 artillery shells, which were first released in 1987. They are used for firing 155 mm howitzers supplied to Ukraine by the United States and other Western countries.
Bomb cassettes can contain hundreds of individual ammunition, which are scattered over an area of tens of square meters when the cassette is detonated in the air. Some of them do not burst immediately and remain lying on the ground, which even long after the end of the conflict poses a threat to civilians. In 2008, the Convention on the Prohibition of Cluster Munitions was adopted, to which 111 countries have already joined, another 12 have signed, but not yet ratified.
The international human rights organization Human Rights Watch has previously indicated that, as a rule, the proportion of unexploded elements significantly exceeds the stated one, which leads to civilian casualties.