Germany is storing US cluster munitions on its territory and shipping them on to Ukraine, public broadcaster NDR reported on Thursday. Under the alleged arrangement, Berlin could be in violation of a UN convention banning the weapons, though it has denied any knowledge of the situation, the outlet said.
Cluster munitions are banned by more than 110 nations under the 2008 UN Convention on Cluster Munitions due to the extreme danger they pose to civilians. They scatter small bomblets that can remain unexploded after the initial blast and effectively become mines.
A spokesman for the US Army Europe and Africa Command told the broadcaster that the controversial ammunition is stored at a US-owned depot in the town of Miesau in western Germany, before being sent on to Ukraine as part of Washington’s military aid. He added that M864 and M483A1 cluster 155mm artillery shells are among the ammunition stored at the Miesau base.
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Citing the Cluster Munition Coalition, an international human rights organization, NDR said that allowing the transport of the weapons could be interpreted as a violation of Germany’s obligations under the UN treaty which Berlin signed in 2008.
The agreement bans the storage and transport of these types of munitions through the territory of any state party to the accord. It also obliges signatory nations to “discourage States not party to this Convention from using cluster munitions.”
According to NDR, Berlin has made “no known efforts” to do anything about the US supply of cluster munitions to Kiev.
Approached by the broadcaster, the German authorities denied having any knowledge of the situation. “First of all, I don’t know where they are being delivered from, and secondly, I wouldn’t comment on it,” Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told NDR.
The German Defense Ministry says it only receives a “rather rough classification” of the weapons being transported by the US through the country. While the US military does register ammunition transports through Germany, the German army has “no knowledge of individual types of ammunition,” it said.
These statements appear to contradict the spokesman for the US Army Europe and Africa Command, who told the NDR that the German Army receives “documentation of the contents of the shipments.” He said the movement of all munitions are coordinated with the National Movement Control Center (NMCC) – the army’s logistics center.
Asked if this applies to M864 and M483A1 bombs, the spokesman replied: “‘All munitions’ means ‘all munitions.’”
Bundestag MP Sevim Dagdelen, a member of the newly formed BSW party and a member of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, told NDR that the government is “clearly not fulfilling its obligations” under the UN treaty and that the “supposed ignorance and unwillingness to know is evidence of a lack of democratic sovereignty and vassalage towards the US.”