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British parliament votes in support of Afghan conflict

British lawmakers overwhelmingly backed the US-led war on Afghanistan Thursday in a vote demanded by critics of the military campaign.

Anti-war members of Prime Minister Tony Blair's governing Labor party forced a procedural vote on the military effort after a lengthy House of Commons debate on the subject.

In the first Commons vote linked to the war effort, 373 supported the government and 13 were against. Four other dissenters called and counted the vote -- and were therefore unable to participate -- effectively taking the tally against the government to 17.

The dissenters questioned the use of cluster bombs and B-52 bombers in the campaign, and said there was growing public support for a pause in airstrikes to allow more humanitarian aid to reach Afghanistan.

Labor lawmaker George Galloway claimed that Parliament was out of step with British opinion on the war, and he said the Islamic world was firmly against the campaign.

"When our own prime minister goes [to Arab countries] he receives short shrift from the leaders he meets," Galloway said as Blair toured the Middle East.

"If there's anyone here who thinks that public opinion in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, is with them, they are living in cloud-cuckoo-land."

Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon defended the airstrikes, saying the US and its allies "have no choice but to act -- and to act decisively."

Shortly after his return from meetings with US Defense officials in Washington, Hoon said the allied military effort would do "everything required" to achieve its objective of bringing prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden to justice.

"That includes, where necessary, the use of cluster bombs," he said. "Against certain targets they are the best and most effective weapons we have."

Labor legislator Diane Abbott said cluster bombs were "in effect airborne land-mines."

The debate was briefly halted when two people sitting in the public gallery of the Commons threw anti-war leaflets into the debating chamber. Police said they had detained a 22-year-old man and 40-year-old woman after the incident.

The defense secretary said it would still be some time before British Royal Marines were ready to participate in ground assaults against the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network.

Eleven Labor lawmakers, four from the Welsh party Plaid Cymru and two from the Scottish National Party opposed the government's handling of the war.
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