United States Mission Geneva

The United States is pleased to participate in this 11th conference of High Contracting Parties to Protocol II on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-traps, and Other Devices, as amended in 1996. The United States landmine policy, as announced in 2004, meets or exceeds all of the provisions of Amended Protocol II. Our national report, provided to the Secretariat today, provides updates to our previous reports, primarily related to assistance activities. In addition to our national implementation of the Protocol, we provide a range of humanitarian mine action assistance to countries around the world.

On behalf of the members of my delegation, I would like to join with other delegations in congratulating you on the assumption of your post as President of the Meeting of States Parties. You have our full support.

With respect to cluster munitions, let me confirm today that the United States remains committed to negotiate a legally binding Protocol on Cluster Munitions in the CCW to mitigate the threat to civilian populations resulting from the use of cluster munitions.

We believe that many of the countries participating in this process who have large stockpiles of cluster munitions could agree to a text along the lines of the one before us, and that these countries will live up to the commitments they make. Therefore, we continue to hope that we will be able to reach agreement and realize the humanitarian gains that are within our grasp here.

My delegation is prepared to support an informal meeting to continue our work in the period between now and the Meeting of States Parties in November. However, we think it is very important, if we are going to have such a meeting, that delegations come to it prepared to roll up their sleeves and work toward final compromises on the remaining issues that need to be resolved to reach agreement on a Protocol. There is no sense in having such a meeting if there is no political will to make these necessary compromises.

I would like to start by reiterating my delegation’s strong support for a CCW protocol on cluster munitions that will have a significant humanitarian benefit. In this regard, we welcome the text that you prepared at the end of the last session in February after engaging in extensive consultations during that session.

While we will have some specific comments on the text that you prepared which we will offer at an appropriate time this week, we believe that the text is generally an excellent basis on which to continue our work. We look forward to both formal and informal sessions this week to try to move this process forward.

Mr. President, we must recognize that the CCW has failed this year to achieve its main task – the adoption of a new protocol on cluster munitions. Our failure is all the more disappointing because the opportunity to agree to a protocol that would have had substantial humanitarian benefits was within our grasp. We will have some additional observations on the GGE when its report is considered by this Meeting.

Mr. Chairman, my delegation finds it deeply disappointing that a group of states has blocked progress on this important humanitarian effort because they have remained completely focused on unrealistic results here and have not worked constructively to achieve a balanced, positive result. During the course of the negotiations these last two weeks, and in particular over the last couple of days, it has become clear that further progress in 2008is impossible given this approach by a number of delegations.

Thank you Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me thank you for the extraordinary job you and your team are doing in leading these negotiations. We believe that we have made substantial progress in this session toward what we hope will be a successful outcome to these negotiations, and you and your team deserve an enormous amount of credit for that. Your draft text proved an excellent basis for work, as did your elements paper for Article 4.

We are eager to start our paragraph by paragraph discussion of this article, but we think it may be appropriate to make some general comments at the outset. Before that, however, let me thank you for your tireless efforts on this topic that has proven exceedingly challenging. While there are obviously different views among delegations about how to approach Article 3, I think there is complete consensus that you have worked extremely hard and inclusively to help us make progress on the issue of international humanitarian law (or IHL).