Afghanistan signs cluster bomb treaty

In a last-minute change, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan agreed on Wednesday to join some 90 other nations signing a treaty banning the use of the cluster munitions that have devastated his country in recent years.

The decision appeared to reflect Mr. Karzai’s growing independence from the Bush administration, which has opposed the treaty and, according to a senior Afghan official who spoke on the condition of anonymity following diplomatic protocol, had urged Mr. Karzai not to sign it.

“Until this morning, Afghanistan was not going to be a signatory,” said Jawed Ludin, Afghanistan’s ambassador to the Scandinavian countries and the leader of its delegation here. He said the president’s change of heart came as a result of pressure by human rights organizations and cluster-bomb victims, including Soraj Ghulam Habib, a 17-year-old from the city of Herat who lost both legs when he accidentally stepped on an explosive cluster remnant seven years ago.

Mr. Ludin’s announcement was greeted by raucous cheers in Oslo’s City Hall, where the signing ceremony began Wednesday after two years of diplomatic work by Norway. By the end of the day, more than 90 nations — including 18 of 26 NATO members — had signed the treaty, called the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bars adherents from using, producing, selling or stockpiling cluster munitions.

Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere, said he expected several more nations to sign on Thursday. Among them, however, will not be the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan or several Middle Eastern nations. But Mr. Gahr Stoere said universal compliance was not necessary for the cluster-bomb treaty to work.

In recent months, Mr. Karzai has sharpened his public criticisms of the American mission in Afghanistan. He has spoken out against aerial bombings and other operations by the American-led forces in the country that have caused civilian casualties, offended cultural sensitivities and undermined popular support for the war that routed the Taliban in late 2001.

While several Afghan officials interviewed Wednesday said that the United States did not publicly press the Afghans to reject the treaty, an official in the Karzai administration said that throughout the process that led to the treaty, the Americans made it clear “that they would prefer that Afghanistan stay out of it.”

The United States has not used any cluster bombs since 2003, said Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst for Human Right Watch, who was at the event in Oslo. A NATO policy banning the use of cluster munitions in Afghanistan has been in place since 2007.

American officials said the United States would continue pursuing measured restrictions on the use of cluster bombs by trying to amend the 1980 United Nations convention on conventional weapons. The members of that treaty include Russia, China and most of the others that have refused to sign the Oslo treaty.