Mr. Chairman, because we believe this is important, I would like to convince my colleagues to do this now, instead of waiting for Oslo, in order for the Oslo process to move ahead at a good pace. We believe that this is something that it is important we do.
Canada played the role of leader during the negotiation of the Convention on landmines. However, if countries had waited to see what was going to happen at the conference before coming on board to show their interest, that would in no way have helped the process along. In any event, we know that there are more than 26 countries today: there are probably 30 some countries now, perhaps more. It is therefore very much in our interest to do this.
The United States can yet again refuse and say that these are weapons that they do not wish to deprive themselves of. We have seen far too many of the effects of these weapons that stay there. In Lebanon, some old landmines that dated back some 20 years were recently uncovered. These cluster bombs are of the same kind. Remember what happened in Afghanistan, where the cluster bombs were small in size and yellow and blended in with the parcels of food that were being thrown down from airplanes, because they were of the same colour. Several children were hurt and even killed. Then they stopped running out to collect the food parcels. Those are just two examples, but there are many more.
I would like to say to the chairman and to the clerk that we have a translation problem. In the French text, you use the term “bombe à dispersion“ in the first paragraph and “bombe à diffusion“ in the third paragraph. There is also the term “bombe à fragmentation“, which I prefer. We should be using the same terminology in the first and third paragraphs, and in all of the others. In English, it is the same term, “cluster bombs“, that is used in all ten paragraphs.
So shall we use the term “bombe à fragmentation“? Thank you.