To address that, Madam, universality of the prohibitions within the convention, universality of state membership, would be the ideal. It would certainly avoid any need for interoperability provisions within the convention itself or within the domestic legislation.
This was an issue through the negotiations. Working with states not party to the convention was expressly contemplated as a recognition of reality at least at this stage. Article 21 was drafted for that purpose as a necessary transition provision to allow states such as Canada with interoperability concerns to nonetheless join the convention, recognizing that they still might need to work with states not parties to the convention until such time as those states join. It was in that context contemplated, with the overall object and purpose of the convention being a universal ban on cluster munitions, a meaningful article 21 that permitted interoperability, of the sort that we've discussed, allowed numerous states to join that wouldn't have been able to and contributed to that object and purpose.