LONDON: Britain is under growing pressure to ban cluster bombs, used in Kosovo and recently by the US in Afghanistan.

A moratorium on their use is being sought by campaigners at a UN conference this week in Geneva, convened to boost the international convention on weapons “deemed to be excessively injurious or to have indiscriminate effects”.

Although the meeting is expected to break up without agreement, delegates have made it clear that pressure on Britain will grow next year. They will discuss extending the convention to anti-vehicle mines and “internal conflicts”, despite Russian opposition. Moscow argues it needs a free hand to counter terrorism in Chechnya.

Cluster bombs scatter 200 “bomblets” over a wide area but up to a quarter fail to explode, posing a long-term threat to civilians. US jets, including B-52s based in the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia, have dropped more than 600 such bombs on Afghanistan, the Pentagon says. That could mean thousands of unexploded bomblets.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said last month it was “unfortunate” that the bright yellow bomblets were similar in colour to food parcels dropped by US planes.

The campaign group Landmine Action and The Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund are pressing Britain to take the lead in demanding controls on cluster bombs.

Richard Lloyd, director of Landmine Action, said: “Like landmines, explosive remnants of war threaten lives and livelihoods until they are cleared. The communities affected cannot wait for years of discussion and negotiation.”

Last week the European parliament urged member states to declare an immediate moratorium. The UK armed forces minister, Adam Ingram, told British members of parliament in October that a ban on such bombs was inappropriate because neither their military utility nor their legality was in doubt.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.