WASHINGTON - A US investigation has found that Israel probably violated US arms export agreements last year when it dropped US-made cluster bombs among villages in Lebanon, the State Department said Monday.
The investigation, summed up in a preliminary State Department report sent to Congress Monday, drew an immediate call from human rights activists for a cutoff of cluster munitions sales to the Jewish state.
"There were likely violations," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters of Israel's use of cluster bombs during a 34-day war against Lebanon.
The cluster munitions spread bomblets over a wide area from a single bomb, rocket or artillery shell, and many of the submunitions fail to explode on impact.
More than 30 people have been killed and 180 others been injured in south Lebanon by ordnance left over from the war.
McCormack declined to provide further information about the report's findings or what end-use rules for cluster munitions Israel may have violated.
"Those parts of the agreements that we negotiate with a foreign government are classified, so we do not speak about them in public," he said.
He also stressed that the report transmitted Monday to the speaker of the House of Representatives and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee was preliminary.
"This is not a final judgement," he said.
But Human Rights Watch said the findings implicating Israel in the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas should be sufficient to end all sales of the weapons to Israel.
"We've investigated cluster munitions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but we've never seen use of cluster munitions that was so extensive and dangerous to civilians," said Steve Goose, a spokesman for the group.
The group urged the US government to end cluster bomb sales to Israel and demand detailed information regarding the quantities, types, and locations where US-made cluster munitions were used in Lebanon.
If the violation of US rules are confirmed, Israel could face sanctions, including a ban on future US sales of cluster weapons to the Jewish state.
Israel was barred from buying cluster munitions for six years in the 1980s after the administration of president Ronald Reagan found it had made unauthorized use of the weapons during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
President George W. Bush has discretion under US law over whether to impose the punitive measures on Israel, which receives some three billion dollars in US military aid each year, the biggest amount of any US ally.
McCormack declined to comment on possible sanctions that could be taken.
Israel now manufactures its own cluster munitions, so a renewal of the export ban would be largely of symbolic significance.
During the July 12-August 14 war against Lebanon, Israel dropped more than a million cluster bombs in southern Lebanon, according to the United Nations.
Israel fruitlessly claimed that Lebanese civilians were not targeted and were warned ahead of the action by leaflets dropped from aircraft.
An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said Monday his government took the US concerns seriously and pointed out that an internal investigation into the use of cluster bombs was still underway.
"We have taken the concerns raised by the Americans extremely seriously. In our answers to their concerns, we have been as detailed, as forthcoming and as transparent as is possible," Mark Regev said.
Cluster bomb wounds two Belgian soldiers in Lebanon
Meanwhile, two Belgian soldiers were wounded in a cluster bomb blast while carrying out demining operations in southern Lebanon Monday.
"The two soldiers were carrying out demining operations in Kunin (southeast of the port city of Tyre) when a cluster bomb exploded," UN spokesman Liam McDowall said.
McDowall said one of the deminers was wounded in the leg and the other in the head. They were taken to a UN makeshift hospital in the area. Their lives were not in danger.
On December 29, two other Belgian deminers were wounded in a similar incident.
Belgium has deployed 370 troops to the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which comprise around 12,000 blue-helmeted soldiers -- most of them from Europe.
The UN says 40 percent (over 400 thousand) of the apple-sized bomblets failed to explode on impact.
Israel has been roundly criticised for its use of cluster munitions during the war with Hezbollah that ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire on August 14.
Cluster munitions spread bomblets over a wide area from a single container. The bomblets often do not explode on impact but can do so later at the slightest touch, making them as lethal as anti-personnel landmines.
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