BEIRUT: The government is guilty of “inconsistency” and “double standards” over its wildly varying stances on international treaties on cluster bombs and land mines, the head of a global anti-munition organization said Wednesday.

Steve Goose, chair of the Cluster Munition Coalition, said that while Lebanon could be proud of its ratification of the Convention on Cluster Munitions in November 2010, its refusal to sign up to the Ottawa Treaty banning land mines was disingenuous.

“Lebanon is not a party to the [Ottawa] Treaty. This is very bad news and we think this is actually quite inconsistent on the part of Lebanon,” Goose told The Daily Star on the sidelines of the Second Meeting of States Party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, currently being held in Beirut.

“Lebanon has been quite clear that it has joined [the cluster munitions] convention because it is convinced of the humanitarian harm that cluster munitions cause. Well guess what? Land mines cause the exact same kind of humanitarian harm,” he said.

The Ottawa Treaty outlaws the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel mines. It currently has 156 party states.

There remain tens of thousands of land mines throughout Lebanon planted by almost all belligerents in the 1975-1990 Civil War. As for cluster bombs, which unlike land mines are fired from aircraft and are designed to explode on impact with the ground, Israel dropped up to 4 million across swathes of the south during the final hours of its 2006 July-August war with Hezbollah.

While there have been suggestions that authorities are reluctant to remove land mines close to the Blue Line – the boundary of Israeli military withdrawal from Lebanon – in order to deter a repeat of the ground invasions conducted by Israel in the past, Goose said there was no good reason for Lebanon not to sign up to Ottawa.

“It’s a separate thing. Your priorities for clearance are separate [from legislation]. It’s a different process. Fieldwork [in removing land mines or cluster munitions] is quite apart from what they are doing in Cabinets and in legislature,” he said.

“The long-term effect of cluster munitions and the long-term effect of land mines, in terms of civilian causalities and in terms of hindering development, is exactly the same. Usually the term people use is that cluster munitions, when they don’t explode like they are supposed to become de facto anti-personnel mines, so the fact that Lebanon has stayed away from the [Ottawa] treaty while being a champion this [the Convention on Cluster Bombs] is very inconsistent,” Goose added.

Lebanon was mulling signing up to Ottawa in 2005 but, according to Goose, the 2006 conflict caused the government to concentrate its cleanup efforts and adherence to international guidelines on cluster bombs, ignoring the continuing threat of land mines.

“It is an inconsistency and a double standard on the part of the Lebanese government,” he said.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions – signed in Oslo in 2008 – bans the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of the weapons. Countries where the convention is in force are obligated to clear contaminated areas within 10 years and destroy existing supplies of the weapons in 8 years.

In the first days of this year’s meeting, Swaziland, Italy and the Czech Republic joined Afghanistan in either ratifying or voicing their intention to ratify the convention.

One of Wednesday’s most high-profile discussions, led by Human Rights Watch, focused on the need for states that have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions to produce domestic legislation in order to ensure that anyone found to be in breach of the treaty can be prosecuted. So far, almost a year after ratifying the convention, Lebanon has come up with no such laws.

Goose said all countries party to the convention “should have criminal penalties in place and Lebanon should be doing that.”

He added: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been very busy preparing for this [convention] rather than pushing forward domestic legislation.”

Millions of dollars have been spend in removing hundreds of thousands of cluster bomb fragments in south Lebanon since August 2006. The Lebanese Army contributes to the cleanup effort through the Lebanese Mine Action Center.

Goose said that the fact that unexploded ordinance remained in large areas of the south should not prevent the Cabinet passing legislation on cluster munitions.

“Especially now we have gotten past this meeting of state parties, this should become a top priority. That doesn’t mean that they should or have a need to slow down any clearance operations they are doing, because this is different. In the range of obligations that Lebanon has under this convention, developing and passing legislation should now be a top priority,” he said.

Goose added that his organization was hopeful Lebanon would be moved to ratify the Ottawa Treaty. “There is more discussion now than there ever was,” he said. “[This week’s meeting] has raised awareness and the need to join the treaty and I believe they will.”