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Cluster Munitions

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. I understand where he is coming from and his very firm view, supported by the Opposition Bench, that the Government cannot at this stage accept that M85 should be discarded. But will he address the rather important point that in all these international negotiations there will be a point at which we will either say that we ask others to accept our view that they are okay, or alternatively we will accept that this is a first step only and that we are not prepared to go beyond that? I should like to hear from him that we will not try to persuade others of our view that these weapons are acceptable because that is a very strongly disputed point. I am not saying that we will not hold to that view ourselves but this could be quite important because what we surely want to do is to end up with an international legal instrument which is capable of being extended as circumstances require.