The European parliament on Thursday joined a growing international chorus for a ban on cluster bombs as well as biological and toxin weapons.
The Euro MPs, by an overwhelming show of hands, supported the proposal calling on the 25 EU member states to work to create a specific protocol "to unambiguously ban the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of all types of cluster munitions (fragmentation-bombs)" within the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).
The resolution also calls on the EU's executive arm and the member states to strengthen national measures on biological weapons "including penal legislation and control over pathogenic micro-organism and toxins".
UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland called last week for an immediate global freeze on cluster bombs following their use during the recent conflict in Lebanon.
The munitions can contain up to 650 smaller bombs which scatter and explode on impact.
The number of countries already supporting moves to at least examine restrictions on cluster bombs has risen to 18, a group lobbying against the weapons said last week.
Austria, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden and the Vatican began the diplomatic push for an additional protocol to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons to deal with the humanitarian problems associated with cluster munitions.
They have been joined by Argentina, Mexico, Germany and several European countries, according to Thomas Nash, co-ordinator of the Cluster Munitions Coalition.
The 100-nation conventional weapons convention bans or restricts the use of chosen types of weapons that cause "unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants" or that indiscriminately affect civilians.
Currently it covers some types of fragmentation shells, some landmines or booby traps, and incendiary devices in civilian areas.
The European parliament also called on governments to seek to expand the scope of the UN's protocol on incendiary weapons to prevent the use of white phosphorus shells, which burst into burning flakes of phosphorus upon impact.