Britain in £30m bomb-clearing fund

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The move is part of a £30 million Government funding package for projects to remove deadly explosives from former warzones.

The cash, spread over three years, will also be used to clear landmines, cluster bombs and other killer devices in countries such as Angola, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.

Last summer's fighting between Israel and Hezbollah left an estimated one million unexploded cluster bombs in southern Lebanon adding to a deadly legacy of landmines from earlier fighting.

Scattering thousands of potentially lethal bomblets, cluster munitions can pose a constant threat to civilians long after the fighting has stopped. They are often brightly coloured and attract the attention of children who pick them up.

Last month Defence Secretary Des Browne announced that British forces would no longer use so-called "dumb" cluster bombs, which do not have self-destruct mechanisms.

Britain has already spent £2.7 million on the effort to clear up Lebanon's cluster bombs.

The Mines Advisory Group (MAG), one of the organisations set to receive a slice of the new funding, plans to send two teams of dogs and handlers to help clear the devices. They will use expertise gained in work in mine-scarred areas such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Afghanistan.

"One of the things that dogs can do effectively is detect some of the buried explosive items, bombs or cluster bombs and mines, we find it quite successful to use dogs in that role," Tim Carstairs of the MAG said.

He added that cash would be used for tasks as diverse as clearing 2,000lb bombs in Laos to tiny bomblets in the Middle East.