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WHO will run Iraq? How will the peace be won? Accurately predicting the political and humanitarian aftermath of the conflict was never going to be easy, but over the past week one thing has become absolutely, depressingly certain. When British and US forces decided to use cluster bombs in Iraq they guaranteed that the killing will continue long after the fighting ends.

In the two years after Operation Desert Storm ended in 1991, unexploded cluster bombs killed 1600 Iraqi civilians and injured 2500 more. And among Kuwait鈥檚 population of only 2.1 million, there were 1609 deaths and injuries from cluster bombs in the first 10 months after the war. In fact, people were still being killed by unexploded ordnance left behind in the 1991 conflict even as this one began.

How many cluster bombs have been used in the present conflict is unclear. A surgical assistant at a hospital in Nasiriyah said that American aircraft dropped three or four cluster bombs on civilian areas, killing 10 and wounding 200. There have also been allegations of cluster bomb strikes in Basra and near the towns of Najaf and Karbala; Iraqi government sources claimed that 26 civilians were killed and 60 wounded in Najaf. What is beyond dispute is that in a war with the declared aim of upholding international law and minimising casualties, cluster bombs are a perverse means to that end.

The weapons have a long history. The first cluster munition was probably a bundle of grenades fired from a mortar, made in Sweden in the 1840s. Cluster bombs were used in both world wars by both sides. The descendants of these weapons have been firmly embedded in military strategy for years, and are now proliferating fast. Some 33 countries make cluster weapons and more than 50 stockpile them. Ground-launched rocket and artillery cluster munitions have become especially popular.

The bombs consist of containers that carry huge numbers of small anti-personnel and anti-armour explosive sub-munitions to the target area. The container then opens up and spreads these 鈥渂omblets鈥� over a wide area, where they are designed to explode on impact. Any civilians in the way will obviously get hurt, but the casualties are by no means limited to those killed in the initial strike.

In fact, the main problem with cluster bombs is that a high proportion of the bomblets fail to explode on impact, leaving live munitions on the ground. There they remain, an indiscriminate hazard, denying access to land and resources. Official military estimates put the average failure rate at 5 per cent or less. But in 1991 up to 40 per cent of bomblets from cluster weapons used in Iraq and Kuwait failed to explode, and in Kosovo in 1999 the failure rate of NATO cluster bomblets was between 7 and 11 per cent.

The long-term humanitarian effects are virtually indistinguishable from those of anti-personnel landmines 鈥� weapons now banned by the Ottawa Treaty, which has been ratified by 132 countries. Yet there is no specific international law dealing with cluster munitions, and countries responsible for deploying them have been slow to clear the live bombs. More than 25 years after the Vietnam war, there were still 500,000 tonnes of unexploded bomblets in neighbouring Laos.

Worse, while anti-personnel mines tend to incapacitate, cluster bombs are more likely to kill. In Kosovo, more people were killed by cluster bombs than by any other unexploded weapon, including landmines. Often brightly coloured, they are especially likely to attract children. Nearly 70 per cent of the 29 civilians killed and 98 injured by cluster bomblets in Afghanistan were under the age of 18.

Geoff Hoon, Britain鈥檚 defence secretary, has claimed that cluster weapons are 鈥減erfectly legal鈥� and play an essential military role, protecting British troops from unnecessary risks. However, international humanitarian law prohibits military attacks that fail to discriminate between combatants and non-combatants, or that disproportionately impact on civilians.

There are also doubts about cluster bombs鈥� military effectiveness. In Kosovo, nearly 300,000 bomblets were dropped by British and American air forces. Yet a subsequent US Army assessment found evidence of only 58 successful strikes against tanks, armoured personnel carriers and artillery pieces; the Yugoslav Army was mostly unscathed. Moreover, US forces in Kuwait, Kosovo and Afghanistan have been severely hampered by unexploded cluster munitions.

The UN鈥檚 Convention on Conventional Weapons has begun negotiating a possible new protocol on explosive remnants of war. The UN should seize the opportunity to introduce new international laws obliging governments and their militaries to clear up after conflicts, pay for the rehabilitation of victims and take every step necessary to protect civilians from cluster bombs and the exceptional problems they cause. Until that happens, there should be a freeze on their further use.

It remains to be seen whether the world will rise to the challenge of this growing menace. Failure will surely lead to growing calls to have cluster bombs permanently banned.