Israel-Lebanon War 2006

Brown's Cluster Bomb ban undermined by his own negiotiators

Mr Brown told an audience of businessmen at Mansion House that he wanted "to work internationally for a ban on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of those cluster munitions which cause unacceptable harm to civilians".

However, as he made the announcement, British officials were at the Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, negotiating for the continued use of controversial Israeli-made M85 explosives.

The M85, a so-called smart-bomb that "self-destructs", has a failure record of between 1% and 2%, according to the government.

Cluster munitions are weapons that on impact disperse several hundred smaller munitions - also known as bomblets, similar to land mines - over areas the size of two or three football pitches.

The only organisation to attempt to measure the numbers injured by unexploded munitions is Handicap International, which estimates that 98% of the 13,000 recorded victims were civilians rather than military.

When Israeli forces dropped M85s during last summer's bombardment of southern Lebanon, the UN mine action coordination centre there said the failure rate was between 6% and 10%. Many parts of Lebanon remain littered with unexploded bomblets.

Steve Goose, the director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, said: "Nobody like Brown, who wants to get rid of arms that cause unacceptable harm to civilians, would back the use of a weapon that has a 6-10% failure rate."

The British army used M85s in Basra, and Human Rights Watch fieldwork found cluster munitions aimed at military targets had killed civilians, with many failing to self-destruct at the time of attack. Mr Brown told an audience of businessmen at Mansion House that he wanted "to work internationally for a ban on the use, productio... more

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