A GROWING number of Washington’s NATO allies – including Britain, Spain, Canada and Germany – have already declared their refusal to follow the US lead on supplying Ukraine with internationally banned cluster bombs, so that it can carry out war crimes.
On Saturday, PM Sunak said he would rather press allied governments to boost their aid to Kiev ‘in other ways’, and that Britain remained a signatory to an international convention that prohibits the use and production of cluster munitions – unlike the US.
‘We will continue to do our part to support Ukraine’ in its war against Russia, he added, emphasising that ‘we’ve done that by providing heavy battle tanks and, most recently, long-range weapons’.
Canada also reaffirmed its commitment to the UN agreement banning the mass-destructive weapon and voiced its opposition to its use in Ukraine’s raging war against Russia. ‘We do not support the use of cluster munitions,’ the Canadian government declared in a statement cited by national broadcaster CTV on Saturday.
Spain also voiced its opposition to the US move, with its Defence Minister, Margarita Robles, announcing that Madrid does not support Washington’s decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine.
‘Spain, based on the firm commitment it has to Ukraine, also has a firm commitment that certain weapons and bombs cannot be delivered under any circumstances,’ Robles said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock also declared on Friday that Berlin was opposed to the US sending cluster munitions to Ukraine.
Moreover, Prime Minister Chris Hipkins of New Zealand – another close US ally – also voiced Wellington’s opposition to the move, saying he will discourage Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the use of cluster bombs if the pair meet up this week at the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium. Hipkins further emphasised that cluster weapons were ‘indiscriminate, they cause huge damage to innocent people, potentially, and they can have a long-lasting effect as well’.
According to press reports, the United Nations along with dozens of human rights organisations and anti-war movements have further censured the Biden administration over its decision.
Russia, meanwhile, has reacted strongly to Washington’s decision to supply the mass-destructive weapon to Ukraine, describing the move as ‘an act of desperation’ amid Kiev’s failure to make any progress in its hyped-up counteroffensive against Russian forces.
‘It is an act of desperation and shows weakness against the backdrop of the failure of the much-touted Ukrainian counteroffensive,’ said Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in a Saturday statement.
Other Russian officials such as Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, blasted the US move as a sign of ‘their impotence’, leading them to ‘commit new madness’. He added: ‘Here, they do not want to admit their own failures and the failure of the attempts of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out an offensive against the Russian regions. Therefore, they commit new madness.’
He then reiterated: ‘Now, through the fault of the United States, for many years there will be a risk that innocent civilians will be blown up by non-functioning submunitions.’
US imperialism is truly desperate, while the workers of the world are opposed to any expansion of the imperialist intervention into the Ukraine to aid the Ukrainian fascists, an intervention that has already led to a massive worldwide inflation that has pauperised millions of workers.
UK workers must now address their leaders, and tell the General Council of the TUC that it must halt any British imperialist intervention into the Ukraine and halt the attempt by the imperialists to use cluster bombs to repeat the mass slaughters of Blair and Bush’s ‘war on Iraq’.
The trade union leaders must tell the TUC it must call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a Workers Government and Socialism! This is the only way forward!