Gordon Brown intervened yesterday to signal his personal intention to phase out the use by Britain’s Armed Forces of all cluster bombs.

A statement put out by his official spokesman electrified the international conference on cluster bombs, which has been going on for three days in Dublin with the aim of reaching a treaty prohibiting their use. Human rights activists interpreted it as a significant switch in British policy.

The Downing Street spokesman said that the Prime Minister had asked the Ministry of Defence to review the risk to civilians posed by the last two remaining weapons deployed with the Armed Forces, the artillery-fired M85 and the helicopter-launched M73.

Until yesterday, the British position in Dublin had been in favour of a treaty, provided the two systems were excluded. It was claimed that they still had a justified military application for the protection of British troops overseas. They emphasised that the weapons had self-destruct mechanisms so that they did not pose a long-term threat to civilians.

However, Downing Street sources said the Prime Minister’s statement was intended to make it clear to the negotiators in Dublin that he wanted such systems to be phased out. One source said: “The Prime Minister believes that the MoD has been dragging its feet over the cluster bomb issue and he wants to force the agenda. He recognises that if the two weapon systems were scrapped it would leave a capability gap. He understands that, but he wants them to be phased out.”

The M85 and M73 are known as direct-fire weapons and the Government has previously argued that they are not the same as other cluster bombs that are dropped indiscriminately over a wide area and lie around for years as a threat to civilians. The systems have submunitions that spread out to have maximum impact on enemy tanks and other armoured vehicles. The M85 has forty-nine submunitions and the M73 has nine.

Mr Brown’s spokesman said: “The Prime Minister has issued instructions to our negotiators that we should work intensively to ban cluster bombs that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. The Prime Minister has asked the MoD to assess the remaining munitions in use [the M85 and M73] to ensure that there is no risk to civilians. We are clear that our forces will always operate in strict accordance with international humanitarian law.”

The statement seemed to take the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the MoD by surprise. Officials from both departments insisted that there was no change in the British negotiating position in Dublin and that the M85 and M73 were still regarded as essential weapons, until such time as an alternative could be found.

However, the officials said that they did not want to preempt what might be agreed when the conference ends on May 30.

Mark Garlasco of Human Rights Watch UK, speaking from the Dublin conference, said that Mr Brown’s statement was being interpreted “as a major switch in policy”.

He added: “If there is a move by the UK to examine whether the Armed Forces still need the M85 and M73, this could be a really positive development.”

The conference is being attended by representatives of 100 countries, but with notable absentees - the United States, Russia and Israel among them.

Norway’s delegates yesterday came up with a proposal to ban all cluster submunitions over a certain weight. Under that scheme, both the M85 and M73 would be banned.

On Monday, in a letter to The Times, nine former top British military commanders urged the Government to scrap its stock of cluster bombs.

Multiple menace

— Cluster bombs were first used in the Second World War

— They consist of containers that open in the air and scatter “bomblets” over a wide area.

— Many fail to detonate, and thousands of civilians have later been killed or injured

— At least 21 states and four areas of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe are affected

— British forces fired 102,900 M85 cluster submunitions in Iraq in the 2003 war

Source: International Committee of the Red Cross

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