Former top soldier Natynczyk defends Canada’s controversial cluster bomb bill

OTTAWA – One of Canada’s former top soldiers, retired general Walt Natynczyk, says he had no knowledge of cluster bomb use in Iraq in 2004 when he was a deputy commander of U.S.-led forces during the war.

But he said he could have unwittingly participated in their use without knowing while he was on the high-level military exchange.

For that reason, Natynczyk says he defends a controversial clause in Canada’s proposed bill that would ratify Canada’s acceptance of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

That has opened Canada to heavy criticism — including from the normally neutral International Committee of the Red Cross — that it is watering down a treaty to ban an abhorrent and imprecise weapon that mainly harms civilians.

The clause would allow the Canadian Forces to be involved in the use of the bombs in joint operations with the United States, which has opted out of the convention, while offering legal protection to senior military personnel such as Natynczyk on high-level secondments.

The U.S. dropped an estimated 74,000 cluster bombs that contained 22 million submunitions, or bomblets, on Iraq during its 1991 and 2003 invasions.