Gangster Government

Gordon Brown’s government is on another collision course with the Bush administration because American officials are concerned that the UK may trade expose British troops to possible legal action, to placate critics of cluster bombs. Mr Brown has already irritated the White House by keeping his distance diplomatically and reducing British troop numbers in Iraq.

Representatives from 122 nations, including Britain will meet in Dublin tomorrow to finalize the terms of a deal that would outlaw the use of most cluster munitions.

Pressure groups have battled for a decade to ban the bombs, because the small bomblets dropped on airfields and enemy tanks do not always explode during wartime and have been blamed for killing and maiming civilians later. But American officials are frantically warning their allies not to sign the treaty as it now stands, because it would undermine Nato and criminalize British soldiers who fight alongside them.

Under the terms of the so-called Oslo process, any member of the military fighting alongside a country like the US, which refused to join the treaty, must face “criminal penalties”.

A senior state department warned that under the treaty, British frontline troops who call in artillery support or air strikes from an American warplane, all of which carry cluster munitions, could be hauled into court.

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