Karen Parker, a San Francisco-based expert in armed conflict law, told American Free Press that the use of radioactive uranium weapons violates the Hague and Geneva Conventions as well as the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980.
"A weapon made illegal only because there is a specific treaty banning it is only illegal for countries that ratify such a treaty," Parker wrote in a paper, "The Illegality of DU Weaponry," presented at the International Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Germany last October. However, "a weapon that is illegal by operation of existing law is illegal for all countries."
Parker, a delegate to the UN Commission on Human Rights since 1982, provides legal advice to the UN on DU weapons and other matters of humanitarian law.
"DU weaponry cannot possibly be legal in light of existing law," Parker said.
According to humanitarian law, the illegality of DU weapons is based on four criteria:
The first is the "territorial" test. Weapons may only be used in the legal field of battle. Weapons may not have an adverse effect off the legal field of battle.
The second is the "temporal" test, meaning that weapons may only be used for the duration of an armed conflict. A weapon that continues to act after the war violates this criterion.
The territorial and temporal criteria are meant to prevent weapons from being "indiscriminate" in their effect.
The third rule is that a weapon cannot be unduly inhumane. The Hague Convention of 1907 prohibits "poison or poisoned weapons." Because DU weapons are radioactive and chemically toxic, as the military knows, they fit the definition of poisonous weapons banned under the Hague Convention.
Depleted Uranium - The truth
http://www.viewzone.com/du/du.html
Pentagon Brass Suppresses Truth About Toxic Weapons
Poisonous Uranium Munitions Threaten World
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2004/08/31_bollyn_pentagon-brass-suppresses.htm
Dennis Kucinich on Depleted Uranium
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/DU/DKonDU.html
Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War
http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2004/DU-Trojan-Horse1jul04.htm
Rating: User: Drachnid 2007-02-24T08:09:03.047Z
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war | crime | illegal | nuclear |