USE OF CLUSTER BOMBS IN INTERNATIONAL CONFLICTS

That this House notes the description by the UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland, of the impact of cluster munitions in recent attacks on Lebanon as shocking and immoral; welcomes the publication of the report, Failure to Protect, by Landmine Action UK, which makes the case for the prohibition of cluster munitions; recognises that these weapons have resulted in unacceptable numbers of civilian casualties in conflicts throughout the world, both at the time of the attack and in the post-conflict period as a result of unexploded ordnance contamination; calls on the UK Government to renounce the use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions and to press for the extension of this policy throughout the international community at the Review Conference of the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in November.