POPE BENEDICT has said he hopes a conference on cluster bombs taking place in Dublin this week will outlaw the deadly weapons by agreeing a strong international convention.
"I hope that, thanks to the responsibility of all the participants, a strong and credible international instrument can be achieved," he said after his noon prayer during a visit to Genoa yesterday.
Representatives of more than 100 states gather in Dublin today for the 12-day conference to finalise an anti-cluster munitions treaty. Cluster bombs are small munitions that open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over wide areas. They often fail to explode, creating virtual minefields that can kill or injure anyone who comes across them.
The UN Development Programme says cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the great majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.
In his comments, made after an address to young people, the pope said "it is necessary to correct the errors of the past and avoid that they are repeated in the future". He said he was praying for the victims of cluster bombs and their families as well as for the successful outcome of the Dublin meeting.
Speaking at the weekend, Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, who will open the conference today, said it "represents a major opportunity for the international community to signal its determination to outlaw the manufacture, use, stockpiling and transfer of these truly terrible weapons which have inflicted so much suffering on civilians, and in particular on innocent women and children."
"I am confident that with hard work and goodwill over the next 10 days we can together make real and substantive progress towards the elimination of the menace these weapons pose," he added.
Separately, the Bishops' Commission for Justice and Social Affairs and Trócaire called on the Government to continue to display its commitment to achieving a comprehensive and immediate ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of all cluster munitions.
In a joint statement, the two bodies said the Government should provide "moral leadership" in favour of a strong treaty which will ensure that all weapons that have the effects of cluster munitions are classified as such and banned.
It should also prioritise the introduction of domestic legislation for the total elimination of cluster munitions, they added.
The world's top producers, users and stockpilers of cluster bombs - the US, Israel, China, Russia, India and Pakistan - will not attend the conference, but diplomats at the UN say Washington is encouraging allies to adopt positions that could lead to a watered-down treaty.
The conference, the largest international meeting of this type ever hosted in Ireland, will run at Croke Park until May 30th.
In advance of the event, a multi-faith service took place at St Mary's Pro-Cathedral in Dublin yesterday. - (Additional reporting: Reuters)
