The U.S. State Department has begun investigating Israel’s use of U.S.-made cluster bombs in southern Lebanon. The New York Times reports that Israel may have violated secret agreements with the United States that restrict when it can employ such weapons. Three types of U.S.-made cluster munitions have been found so far in southern Lebanon. The State Department has also held up sending Israel a shipment of M-26 artillery rockets, a cluster weapon. During the 1980s, the U.S. imposed a six-year ban on sales of cluster bombs to Israel after a Congressional investigation determined that Israel had used the weapons against civilians during its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Yesterday we questioned Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Carmon, about the cluster bombing of the Lebanese civilian population.

Ambassador Daniel Carmon: What I can tell you, that Israel abides by the principle of international law and international military law. I don’t want to go specifically into details of something that has been written in one report, respectable as it is or not. I’d rather not go into the details.

Amy Goodman: Well, Israel hasn’t denied that it’s used cluster bombs in Lebanon. And now, after the hot conflict has begun to simmer down, you still have these bomblets on the ground that are exploding.

Ambassador Daniel Carmon: Well, I didn’t deny it either. What I was saying, that we are abiding by the international law, the military and the international humanitarian law. And I would leave it at that.

In Lebanon, the long process of clearing areas of cluster bombs and landmines has already begun.

• Frederick Gras of the Mine Advisory Group: “It is very difficult to say how long we need to recover everything. When we walk in a garden sometimes we find ammunition from the last war so it will take many years.”