UNITED STATES POLICY ON CLUSTER MUNITIONS

That this House commends the new US administration for including in the 2009 Omnibus Appropriation Bill a provision to prohibit the sale or transfer by the US of cluster munitions that cause unacceptable harm to civilians; recognises that this represents a major policy shift from the position of the previous administration that described this type of ordnance as `legitimate weapons with clear military utility'; acknowledges that the US military arsenal still contains 5.5 million cluster bombs with 728 million bomblets; and urges the US administration to renounce the use, stockpiling and transfer of all such weapons by signing the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which more than half the countries in the United Nations have already done.