The fund, which helps land mine victims, launched the campaign with other aid groups to coincide with the fourth anniversary of Britain signing the Ottawa Land mine Treaty.

The treaty bans the use of anti-personnel mines and requires clearance of mined land.

``It seems a timely moment to urge the UK government to take a leadership role in rallying international opinion behind international humanitarian law to also apply to cluster bombs,'' fund Chief Executive Andrew Purkis said.

Richard Lloyd, director of campaign group Landmine Action, cited U.S. military figures showing that 600 cluster bombs had been used in Afghanistan, each containing 202 small bomblets.

He said they were designed to kill within a range of 150 meters, pierce five inches of armor and set fire to material.

``When the container opens up and scatters the bomblets on the ground, they are supposed to detonate on impact...our experience is that a high proportion of them don't,'' he said.

``The conservative estimate is that 10 percent of these bomblets fail to go off...If there's been 120,000 bomblets used in Afghanistan already, then there's 12,000 of these lying around waiting to explode at the slightest touch,'' he added.

Lloyd said he was receiving more and more reports of casualties on the ground in Afghanistan, including one of a 10-year-old boy who mistook a bomblet for a food packet.

The bomblets are yellow, like the more than two million food packets dropped by the United States, he said.

POST-CONFLICT PROTECTION

Cluster bombs and anti-vehicle mines kill and maim people returning home to try and rebuild their lives, Lloyd said.

``What we are campaigning for is new international law to require the users of explosive weapons to clear them up afterwards. The aim is to get militaries to protect civilians post-conflict as well as during a conflict,'' he said.

The Sandy Gall Appeal for Afghanistan, which provides mine victims with artificial limbs, said cluster bombs added to what the United Nations estimates are one and a half million unexploded mines in the country.

Purkis said an upcoming review of the 1980 Inhumane Weapons Convention at a U.N. conference on December 10-21 in Geneva was an opportunity to address the problems of cluster bombs.

``That meeting could order an expert panel to prepare a new protocol that would cover cluster bombs and other explosive remnants, with a view to bringing them within the UN Convention for the first time,'' he said.

``What is really important is that the state parties gathered in Geneva feel the force of public opinion, feel that this is a moral issue that people mind about. The recent use of cluster bombs in Afghanistan highlights the problem because these bombs are being dropped in our name, now, `` Purkis said.

Copyright © 2001 Reuters Limited

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