By Neil Mackay
Investigations Editor

GORDON Brown plans to renege on his personal pledge to ban cluster bombs after pressure from the Ministry of Defence. The government will seek exemptions from a global ban for a number of types of cluster bomb stockpiled by UK forces at a forthcoming international summit in Dublin next month.

The government U-turn has lead to British military chiefs and more than 250 humanitarian organisations, charities and pressure groups from some 70 countries across the world combining to shame the UK administration into sticking to its promise to outlaw the weapons.

The munitions have been described by seasoned military chiefs as indiscriminate, lethal for civilians and counter-productive for British military aims abroad. Many cluster munitions are brightly coloured or shiny bomblets' which cascade to earth often without detonating.

Sixty per cent of casualties are children who have been attracted to the weapons with fatal consequences. Although global figures are impossible to establish firmly, minimum estimates put the number of civilian casualties at around 10,000.

Humanitarian organisations including Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Landmine Action and Amnesty International have also condemned cluster bombs as a weapon which is "beyond the pale" and should be outlawed immediately.

Lord Ramsbotham, a former general and commander of the British army's 3rd Armoured Division, said the weapons were designed to fight the Cold War when western powers faced massed tank and troop forces from Soviet Russia. "Cluster munitions cause indiscriminate injury to civilians," he said. "They have no current strategic purpose.

"If British people were on the receiving end of these weapons, and witnessed the indiscriminate harm that they do to innocent civilians long after a conflict is over, we'd want them banned too. These are the worst types of weapons to use if you are trying to win hearts and minds."

Humanitarian organisations say that if the UK succeeds in its push for exemptions for some cluster bombs in the British arms stockpile the entire Dublin summit will be fatally undermined. In November last year, the Prime Minister made clear his commitment for an international ban on cluster munitions.

The vast majority of the 100 states taking part in the Dublin negotiations are committed to banning the weapons. The USA, Russia and China oppose any ban, and nations including France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands are pushing, like the UK, for certain cluster bombs to be made exempt.