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Strategic Export Controls

Does the hon. Gentleman agree in relation to smart cluster bombs that the military operational imperative must be balanced against their known failure rate, as failures represent the sowing of anti-personnel mines, which are banned under the Ottawa convention? After the Foreign Affairs Committee's visit to the minefields in southern Lebanon, which were sown by the Israelis during the war there, the senior UN mine clearance people, headed by the United Nations Mine Action Service, advised us:"““We have established that the M85 with self destruct (what you call 'smart') has a failure rate of…5-10 per cent.””" Given the number of bomblets that are detonated, or rather meant to be detonated, a failure rate of even 5 to 10 per cent. represents a very large number of lethal bomblets lying around on which men, women and children can blow themselves up.