The US is investigating whether Israel's use of American-made cluster bombs in Lebanon violated an agreement that the weapons not be used in populated areas, officials said yesterday.
Unexploded "bomblets" from cluster munitions have emerged as the most lethal obstacle to the return of refugees to southern Lebanon after the month-long war between Israel and Hizbullah.
The UN said the fist-sized bombs had been found in nearly 300 locations and about two-thirds of them were American-made. "We've heard the allegations that these munitions were used in Lebanon and we're looking into it," a state department spokesman said yesterday.
Another official confirmed that the sale of cluster bombs was conditional on Israel using them only against military targets in the open, away from civilian areas.
Details of that undertaking - dating back to the first sales of cluster munitions in the 1970s - are classified, but they are reported to include a pledge to use them only against organised armies and clearly defined military targets.
During the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict, the state department was reported to have sought to suspend delivery of M-26 anti-personnel cluster rockets because of fears about how they would be used.
It was unclear yesterday whether they were delivered over its objections. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have previously bought M-26 rockets and US-made cluster artillery shells, and CBU-26 aerial bombs.
Bomblets from all three have been found by UN investigators in southern Lebanon.
A spokesman for the Israeli embassy was not available for comment yesterday.Israel has maintained it avoided using cluster bombs against populated areas and argues that Hizbullah bears primary responsibility for civilian deaths by triggering the war with a cross-border raid on July 12th and launching rockets from inside Lebanese villages.
Israel's use of cluster bombs in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon provoked a con- gressional inquiry, which concluded that Israel had broken the conditions on their sale.
Ronald Reagan's administration then imposed a six-year ban on deliveries of the munitions to Israel.