Nations Prepare for Cluster Bomb Accord

When August's fighting surrounded her cottage in this quiet village, Tamuna Kitiashvili fled to the Georgian capital with her husband and 3-year-old daughter.

Ollie Pile, an operations manager with de-mining charity The Halo Trust in Georgia, explains the...

Ollie Pile, an operations manager with de-mining charity The Halo Trust in Georgia, explains the incoming trajectory of cluster ordinance, which were used in fighting in the conflict between Russia and Georgia in the Georgian village of Akhaldaba in this Friday, Oct. 31, 2008, photo. (AP Photo/Shakh Aivazov)

(AP)

They returned to find their home covered in what looked like flashlight batteries. The metal cylinders crashed through the roof and lodged in the floorboards. More lay scattered in the garden where they grow vegetables.

The cylinders were deadly cluster bomblets designed to tear apart tank armor — but which more often end up maiming or killing children. Representatives from more than 100 nations gather in Oslo, Norway on Wednesday to sign a historic accord barring their use.

Georgia was the latest country to fall under the plague of cluster bombs as war broke out with Russia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, but the munitions have long been a scourge of wartorn places from Angola to Afghanistan.

Most of the munitions scattered around Kitiashvili's home have been cleared, but she still lives in terror of sporadic explosions that go off at night. "Who knows what could happen?" asks the 22-year-old mother, holding onto her daughter tightly.

Although activists are hailing the cluster bombs convention as a landmark achievement, the refusal of the world's two largest producers of the munitions — the United States and Russia — to sign on will limit its effect.

"These two countries seem to have a bit of an allergy to international law in general," said Thomas Nash, coordinator of The Cluster Bomb Coalition. "Of course, we're always disappointed that these countries choose not to be a part of the international legal framework."

Washington and Moscow say cluster bombs have legitimate military uses such as repelling advancing troop columns.

Stephen Mull, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, told reporters in May that a comprehensive ban would hurt world security and endanger U.S. military cooperation on humanitarian work with countries that sign the accord.