Norway conference seeks path to cluster bomb ban

OSLO, Feb 22 (Reuters) A decade after the Ottawa treaty to ban landmines, representatives of 47 governments met today to build an international agreement outlawing cluster bombs.

Cluster munitions, used in conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq, are blamed for killing and maiming thousands of civilians, and for sowing horror decades after they are fired in combat.

''The time has come to agree these weapons that cause such indiscriminate suffering should no longer be used,'' Norway's Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told the two-day conference.

The 1997 Ottawa treaty banned anti-personnel landmines and has been signed by 155 nations.

''I see no reason why countries who have signed on to that treaty would not sign on to this one because what we are talking about here is the anti-personnel landmine all over again,'' Stoere said on the sidelines of the conference.

Cluster bombs comprise a range of munitions that can be dropped from aircraft or fired in artillery shells or rockets. These contain hundreds of sub-munitions that spread out to saturate wide areas, kill enemy soldiers and pierce armour.

The bomblets sometimes fail to explode during combat and can pose a threat to civilians for decades after a conflict.

Advocacy group Handicap International cites 11,000 documented cases where civilians have been killed or injured by cluster munitions over the past 30 years.

Israel's use of cluster munitions in its conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon last year heightened public awareness.

Nobel laureate Jody Williams, winner of the 1997 Peace Prize for the anti-landmine campaign she led, told Reuters: ''Indiscriminate is indiscriminate whether it is a landmine, a cluster bomb or a nuclear weapon. Any indiscriminate weapon is illegal under international law.'' Munitions-producing nations, including the United States, Russia and China, are resisting a ban.

Stoere urged governments to forge a plan to reach a legally binding treaty to address all the ''unacceptable consequences'' of cluster bombs by 2008.

The treaty should ban the use, stockpiling and proliferation of cluster munitions and provide for clearing them, destroying stockpiles and helping affected nations, he said.

At the start of the meeting, Austria announced it had adopted a cluster munitions moratorium. Norway also has a moratorium and Belgium has banned the weapons.

REUTERS SAM PM2208