British ministers have dismissed a claim that the Saudi-led coalition has used a UK-made cluster munitions during its military operation in Yemen.
"There is no evidence yet that Saudi Arabia has used cluster
munitions," Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told parliament on 24 May.
Saudi Arabia's military spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed Asiri,
told CNN on 11 January that the coalition had used a CBU-105 sub munitions
weapon against a military target.
Hammond's statement was a response to an Amnesty International
report documenting a malfunctioned BL 755 cluster bomb found in the northern
Yemeni province of Hajjah. Amnesty released photographs showing a BL 755
dispenser still containing unexploded No 2 Mk 1 dual-purpose bomblets with the
same markings used by the UK Royal Air Force.
Made by
the British company Hunting Engineering and its successor Insys, which was
acquired by Lockheed Martin in 2005, the BL 755 has been cleared for use with a
wide variety of aircraft. Amnesty International said both Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE) - the two leading members of
the Arab coalition that
launched an air campaign over Yemen in March 2015 - have stockpiles of the
bombs.
Philip Dunne, the minister who oversees defense exports, told
parliament that the UK had delivered no BL 755s to Saudi Arabia since 1989 and
had not supplied, maintained, or supported any such weapons since it signed the
Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008.
He provided a more nuanced denial than Hammond, saying,
"Based on all of the information available to us, including sensitive
coalition operational reporting, we assess that no UK-supplied cluster weapons
have been used or UK-supplied aircraft have been involved in the use of UK
cluster weapons in the current conflict in Yemen."
Dunne suggested the weapon recorded by Amnesty International was
dropped during an earlier round of fighting.
