The Obama administration is being accused of weakening an international convention banning cluster bombs at a key international meeting in Geneva. Member states of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have gathered to finalize a legally binding protocol. The U.S. has played a key role in the talks despite refusing to join the convention, reportedly pushing a proposal that would allow the use of all cluster munitions made after 1980. Steve Goose of the Cluster Munitions Coalition slammed the U.S. stance.

Steve Goose: “We have governments here, this week and next week, negotiating a new international treaty on cluster munitions, with much lower standards. This has never happened before in international humanitarian law, where you have a treaty that has been agreed by the majority of the world’s nations with very high standards, and then states get together and try and negotiate an alternative treaty with very low standards. We find this outrageous.”