Pressure on Canada as Britain backs cluster-bomb ban

Landmine victim Tun Channareth, from Cambodia, speaking during the cluster munitions conference at Croke Park, Dublin, Monday, May 26, 2008. American activists and global victims of cluster bombs united Monday in a demand that governments - particularly the United States - ban the weapons because they kill and maim too many civilians. The appeal came four days before negotiators from 110 governments are expected to unveil a treaty restricting the development, sale and use of cluster munitions. The pact would be formally signed in December in Norway and seek to emulate the achievement of a 1997 treaty outlawing land mines.(AP Photo / Niall Carson)

Chunnareth Tun, of Cambodia, a survivor of a cluster bomb, was in Dublin, Ireland, for a 12-day conference aimed at clinching a global ban on cluster munitions. Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Peter O'Neil, Europe Correspondent , Canwest News Service

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants to sign a proposed new treaty banning so-called cluster bombs and is prepared to scrap his military's entire stockpile of the weapons that have proven to be a nightmare for hundreds of civilians, the Guardian reported today.

Brown's decision is likely to heighten pressure on Canada to support the treaty being negotiated at an international conference in Dublin this week aimed at striking a global treaty banning the weapons.

"The prime minister is very much behind this process and wants us to sign," according to an unidentified British official quoted in the newspaper.

Several organizations pushing for the ban have criticized Canada, which played a lead role in the Nobel Prize-winning treaty in the late 1990s banning landmines, for dragging its feet on the cluster bomb treaty.

Cluster bombs explode in mid-air, scattering numerous "bomblets" that at times don't explode until found later by civilians, including children.

Afghan cluster bomb victim Soraj Ghulam Habib, 16, presented a letter to the Canadian embassy in Dublin earlier this week saying that a bomblet blew off his legs and killed his relatives.

"These weapons destroy lives and communities and should be banned by all countries, including Canada," Habib said, according to a news release from a coalition of Canadian groups involved in the Dublin talks.

The U.S. government, which has refused to take part in the negotiations, has been accused of pushing allies like Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Australia to oppose or try to water down the treaty.

There are concerns that the treaty could prevent Canada, which has no cluster bombs in its arsenal, from working with the U.S. in theatres such as Afghanistan.

Pope Benedict XVI and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have called on negotiators to strike a deal by the time the Dublin negotiations conclude Friday.