Treaty for cluster bombs expected during upcoming conference

Delegates from more than a hundred countries will open a conference in Dublin on Monday that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling or transfer of cluster munitions - bombs or artillery shells packed with up to several hundred bomblets or submunitions that are sprayed over wide areas of territory.

Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty, but disarmament experts liken the cluster treaty to the Ottawa Treaty of 1997 banning land mines, which was shunned by the major powers but has proved influential in shaping the policies of countries outside the convention.