The British government came under renewed pressure overnight to ban cluster bombs on the 10th anniversary of a treaty banning landmines worldwide.

Herald Sun
Wednesday, 19 September 2007

"Like landmines, cluster bombs sow death and injury in the fields and villages of innocent men, women and children," said a group of religious leaders in a letter to The Times newspaper.

"Like landmines, they make rebuilding after conflict painful and precarious," added the signatories, who included the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, the Bishop of Coventry and Sikh community leader Indarjit Singh.

At least 400 million people live in areas contaminated by unexploded bomblets, according to groups supporting the proposed ban.

The bombs are largely found in the Middle East, where they are used by Israel; in South-East Asian countries, where the United States deployed them in the 1970s, and in the former Yugoslavia.

China, Russia and the United States, the largest manufacturers of cluster bombs, oppose the ban on the sub-munitions altogether.

The call came on the anniversary of the adoption of the Ottawa treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, signed in 1997. It was championed by the late Diana, princess of Wales.

A British Foreign Office spokesman said: "The government is committed to universalising the Ottawa Convention and supporting humanitarian mine clearance."

Britain spends more than £10 million ($24 million) every year on mine clearance programs in countries like Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, DR Congo or Sudan.

Former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell added his weight to the calls, claiming the British government had tried to get round the rules by reclassifying munitions.

"The UK government has recently decided that its M73 bomblets are no longer classified as cluster munitions," he said.

"Spin will not save civilian lives. Cluster bombs are, in their evil effects, identical to landmines. It is inconceivable that a civilised nation should have such weapons in its armoury, still less deploy and use them."