Prime Minister Fouad Siniora made this appeal during a meeting in Beirut Monday with U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.

Acting Foreign Minister Tarek Mitri, who attended the meeting, told reporters afterwards that Siniora had called for this meeting to discuss the cluster bombs, "from which Lebanon, especially the people of the south, continue to suffer until this moment."

Some 30 people have been killed and 154 others injured in southern Lebanon from over one million unexploded cluster bombs that Israel dropped in the area during last summer's 34-day war.

Mitri said the prime minister asked Feltman that his country respect the agreements that ban sales of cluster bombs to Israel because it violates the purchase agreement that prohibits their use against civilian targets.

He added that in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan, the United States banned the sale of cluster bombs to Israel for six years and stressed that Lebanon insists such a ban be enforced.

Israel may have misused U.S. cluster bombs

Israel's use of U.S.-made cluster bombs in last year's war in Lebanon may have violated agreements with the United States governing their use, the State Department said last Monday.

"There may -- likely could have been some violations," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

The State Department has sent a report to Congress laying out the preliminary findings, he said.

Picture: Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ( R) with U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.

Sources: UPI, Ya Libnan