Bomblet casts doubt on export policy

BRITAIN, one of the leading opponents of a global moratorium on landmines, has contributed to the landmine scourge in former Yugoslavia in the form of British-made cluster bombs.

Among the various innocuous- looking killing devices on display at a United Nations landmine awareness exhibition in Croatia is a spidery British bomblet, known as a 'Hunting Engineering BL755 sub-munition'.

According to the UN forces' engineers, the BL755 has been found near towns and villages in both Croatia and Bosnia where between 2 and 4 million mines and bomblets threaten to maim and kill civilians for years to come, long after the war is over.

Britain claims that it no longer exports landmines, but it still exports cluster bombs and other air- delivered sub-munitions which the Government says are distinct from landmines. Humanitarian organisations profoundly disagree. According to Rae McGrath, the director of Mines Advisory Group, a British non-profit landmine clearance organisation, unexploded sub-munitions are landmines in all but name.

Cluster bombs like the BL755 are delivered from planes and scattered in their hundreds over vast areas. There is often no indication of where they land. If they do not detonate on impact, as is often the case, they will lie on the ground until stepped on or disturbed.

Children find their unusual shapes irresistible and often pick them up. When they do explode, they spread shrapnel capable of ripping through 10ins of armour- plating over almost an acre.

In his book, Landmines, Legacy of Conflict: A manual for development workers, published by Oxfam, Mr McGrath defines anti-personnel mines to include cluster bombs, which, although not primarily intended to kill or maim individuals upon contact, 'become de facto anti-personnel mines when deployed in such a manner that they do not explode on impact'. This may be done deliberately or otherwise.

Produced until a few years ago by Hunting Engineering Ltd, the Bedforshire arms manufacturer, the BL755 was legally exported to Yugoslavia before the 1991 international arms embargo was imposed. But according to human rights groups and anti-landmine campaigners, the legality of the sales is not the issue.

They say it is the irresponsible use of BL755 in the former Yugoslavia that casts doubts on the effectiveness of the Government's export control policy, the cornerstone of its defence against calls to ban landmines and similar weapons systems.

The Government consistently rejects international moves towards a blanket ban on the production and export of anti-personnel landmines. Britain and Italy (Europe's single largest producer and exporter of landmines), are the only two West European countries to have completely ignored calls to ban landmine exports.

In a January 1993 letter to Chris Mullens MP, Douglas Hogg, then the minister responsible for defence sales at the Foreign Office, said the Government had no plans to follow the United States' lead in introducing legislation to prohibit the export of landmines. 'We believe that our current stringent controls on the export of defence equipment, which includes controls on all mines, are sufficient to stop the sale of these weapons to countries which may use them in an irresponsible manner,' Mr Hogg wrote.

But Bill Arkin, an American military consultant and an expert on cluster bombs, scoffs at the British position. 'The problem with that line of reasoning, as we have seen, is that today's Yugoslavia is tomorrow's Serbia. That is why the focus for restriction has to be on the weapon and the true nature of the weapon system.'

While the Ministry of Defence is fiercely opposed to a ban on mine use and production, it is even more virulently against linking landmines and cluster bomb sub-munitions.

'You can't compare sub-munitions with landmines. Sub-munitions are meant to explode on impact, not be hidden in the ground waiting. If you are going to make the comparison then you might as well compare mines to mortar shells which failed to detonate,' one MoD official said.

UN military engineers have included the BL755 alongside landmines in a pragmatic recognition of the equal danger the bomblets represent to civilians, relief workers and UN peace-keepers who might accidentally step on one.