Democratic senators introduced legislation that would bar US use of cluster bombs in or near civilian areas or that have a "dud rate" of one percent or greater.

Human rights groups urged speedy action on the bill sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

Dropped from aircraft or fired by artillery, cluster munitions open above ground and disperse dozens to hundreds of tiny bomblets over a wide area.

Although designed to stop armored assaults, bomblets have fallen on civilian areas and littered fields long after the end of hostilities, most recently in Lebanon.

The bill would restrict funding for the use, sale or transfer of cluster munitions unless their submunitions have a failure rate of less than one percent, or unless the president grants a waiver on national security grounds.

It would also bar their use in or near civilian areas.

Since 2005, the Defense Department has required that newly purchased submunitions have a failure rate of less than one percent.

Human Rights Watch, however, estimates that only about 30,000 of the millions of cluster munitions currently in the US arsenal meet the bill's criteria.

"The US has a staggering number of submunitions in its arsenal -- perhaps one billion - that are highly unreliable and should never be used," said Steve Goose of the New York-based rights group.

The United States used about 2 million submunitions in Iraq in 2003, some 248,000 in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, and another 295,000 on Kosovo in 1999, the group said.

Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse

###