The clean up effort on the part of the U.S. comes after the Senate rejected an amendment on September 6, 2006 to simply restrict the usage of cluster bombs in civilian areas throughout the world. The amendment did not pass after being rejected by 70 members of the Senate.

The United Nations has estimated that Israel dropped as many as 4 million of the bomblets in southern Lebanon, with perhaps 40 percent of the submunitions failing to explode on impact. Sadly, most of the cluster bombs dropped during the past 40 years have been delivered by the US and Israel.

The United States has launched an investigation into whether Israel violated agreements restricting the use of US-made cluster bombs during the conflict. A State Department spokesman said Thursday that the probe was continuing.

Aggressive Removal

The U.S. government's aid chief, Randall Tobias, said unexploded bombs remained a major problem in Lebanon where Israel dropped many thousands of cluster bombs.

"The effort to remove the unexploded ordnance is moving along very aggressively and we're really making a lot of progress," said Tobias, L in picture posing with the Damour bridge destroyed by U.S. made Israeli F-16 jets.

About $100 million of a $250-million U.S. aid commitment already has been "put to work" on projects from clearing bombs to helping dairy farmers, Tobias told reporters.

Tobias, who visited Lebanon late last month, said US-funded teams had removed or assisted in the removal of about 50,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance left from the July-August war between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

He said this was double the amount of munitions cleared over a two-year period in Kosovo following the 1999 conflict in the Serbian province.

An international donors conference on Lebanon is expected to take place in Paris in January and Tobias urged other nations to follow through on about $900 million in aid pledged at a meeting in Stockholm in September.

"We really need to urge everyone to move as quickly as they can to move their words into action on the ground. There really is a significant need for help," he said.

The government estimates its needs at about $3.5 billion to repair buildings and infrastructure damaged in the Israeli war.

4 Million Gift Wrapped Kisses of Death

Israel scattered 4 million cluster bombs over Lebanon during its latest invasion earlier this year, almost all of them during the final 72 hours. It looked like revenge, or -- like its deliberate bombing of the Jiyeh power plant, causing a massive oil spill -- an attempt to cripple Lebanon's economy. Since the invasion ended, more than two Lebanese civilians have been blown up by cluster bombs each day on average. Only a single Hezbollah fighter has been reportedly killed to date by a cluster bomb.

A cluster munition is a large bomb, rocket or artillery shell that contains hundreds of small submunitions, or individual bomblets. In some cases, up to 40 percent of the bomblets fail to explode and therefore pose a significant danger to civilians long after conflict has ended. Over 98 percent of the victims are civilians according to Handicap International, a UK-based NGO.

Sources: Ya Libnan, AP, Reuters, The Guardian