Australian responsibility: cluster bomb carnage in Iraq

ROBERT HILL: Anyway, where it is possible to use an alternative munition, then we would prefer it. There are obviously aspects, in relation to cluster bombs, that we don't approve - and that is why we don't use them and we don't facilitate the use of them. Where there is not an alternative, that becomes a very difficult issue because we are in a conflict where Australian and other coalition lives are at risk. We want to achieve our goals as quickly and safely is possible.

DEBORAH SNOW: Have you not taken steps to try to ascertain whether they are being used or not, and if so made certain representations as to how you think they should be used, given that we are perceived, at least in the Arab world, as a part of the force that is using these weapons?

ROBERT HILL: No, I haven't done that. As I just said to you, if our coalition allies believe that they have no other alternative to safely and effectively achieve the mission, I am not going to condemn them for making that decision.'

Under the international legal doctrine of command responsibility, government and military officials can be held liable if they knew, or should have known, that anyone under their command was committing war crimes and they failed to prevent them [22]. This doctrine of command responsibility is codified in Article 28 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which is now embedded in Australian law. Further responsibility is specified under Article 28(a) regarding crimes committed by forces under their command if they 'either knew or, owing to the circumstances at the time, should have known that the forces were committing or about to commit such crimes' [23].

Despite direct knowledge of their widespread use and lethal effect on Iraq's civilian population, Hill still refused to condemn, or even question, their use by Australia's allies. Nor did he act to stop the RAAF's direct cover for US troops firing cluster munitions on heavily populated civilian areas. Hill, former Australian Defence Force head General Peter Cosgrove, and Brigadier General Mike Hannan, and other senior Australian ministers were direct participants, rather than simply accomplices, in this large scale killing of civilians.

This is just one among many examples of why we need an independent Inquiry into Australia's shameful participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Any Inquiry should address these and other numerous allegations of war crimes committed by Australia's senior government ministers, military leadership, and bureaucrats working in the Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupation government. An Inquiry should have the jurisprudence to initiate prosecution for war crimes in the Australian courts. In the case of those responsible for air support of cluster bomb munitions attacks on defenceless civilian populations, they should be tried for violations of the Geneva Conventions which protect civilians and prohibit indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations, and as per Australia's ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.