Representatives from 23 countries gathered in Belgrade on Wednesday to attend a two-day meeting dedicated to the ban of cluster bombs, news reaching here from Belgrade said.
“The conference represents a step towards a full prohibition of the use of cluster bombs,” Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said after the conclusion of the first day gathering.
Jeremic said he hoped that this conference would lead to a convention that would ban the cluster munitions which have affected the lives of thousands of people in Serbia and across the world.
The conference, initiated by the Serbian government, stems from the so-called “Oslo process” launched by Norway in February this year which called for cluster bombs to be banned by 2008.
Jeremic said about 350,000 sub-munitions of cluster bombs had been dropped on Serbian territory during the 1999 NATO bombing campaign to drive out of Kosovo the Serbian forces fighting ethnic Albanian separatists.
It is believed that about 20,000 unexploded bomblets are still scattered on its territory. Since then, at least six people had been killed by exploding cluster bomblets, and 12 more had been injured.
At least 75 countries stockpile cluster bombs and 34 are known to have produced more than 210 types of them. Fourteen states have used cluster bombs in at least 30 countries and territories, it was reported.
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