China attaches importance to humanitarian problems resulting from cluster bombs and supports international efforts to resolve this issue, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told a press conference on Tuesday.

Liu said that "China would continue its effort with other parties for an early and proper solution on the humanitarian problems arising from cluster bombs."

He said a government experts' group, under the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), had been working to ban cluster bombs, and China had taken an active and constructive part in its work.

The CCW took effect in 1981. It bans or restricts the use of specific types of weapons that are considered to cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or to affect civilians indiscriminately.

Cluster bombs can spread hundreds of bomblets over a target area. Many of these fail to explode immediately, posing a threat to civilians for many years after a conflict.

(Xinhua News Agency December 2, 2008)