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Polish national security official calls for producing, stockpiling cluster munitions

"We have production facilities that are capable of producing them," Jacek Siewiera said

MOSCOW, October 17. /TASS/. Polish Secretary of State and Head of the National Security Bureau Jacek Siewiera believes that his country should start producing cluster munitions for its arsenals.

"Poland used to manufacture cluster munitions. We have production facilities that are capable of producing them. We did not join international conventions [prohibiting the production and use of cluster munitions]," he said in a podcast for the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

In his opinion, the casualty area of such projectiles makes them an effective means of deterrence.

Cluster munitions - available in anti-tank, anti-personnel and incendiary versions - eject a number of smaller submunitions when exploding. They are in service with numerous armies in worldwide, including in the form of bombs, artillery shells and missile warheads.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions was signed in Oslo, Norway, in December 2008 and entered into force on August 1, 2010, six months after it was formally ratified by 30 countries. So far, a total of 124 nations have joined the convention.

European countries that are not signatories to the convention are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Greece, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, Finland and Estonia.

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