British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said during his meeting with President Biden at Downing Street that the United Kingdom remained opposed to sending cluster munitions to Ukraine.
An official spokesperson for Sunak said the prime minister told Biden the U.K. will “stand by our obligations” under a 2010 convention banning all use, production, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster munitions out of humanitarian concern over civilian casualties, Politico reported.
In doing so, Sunak reaffirmed directly to Biden what he told reporters over the weekend – that Britain “discourages” the United States from sending the controversial munitions to Ukraine.
Sunak and Biden publicly put on a united front, though, when they met at Downing Street in London for about 40 minutes Monday, a day before the NATO summit started in Vilnius, Lithuania. Outside Downing Street, Biden told reporters that he “couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend and a greater ally.”
It was the sixth time the two leaders have met since Sunak took office.
Taking tea in the garden, where he was served a Downing Street mug, Biden described the U.S.-U.K. relationship as “rock solid,” the National News reported.
“We stand as two of the firmest allies in that alliance and I know we’ll want to do everything we can to strengthen Euro-Atlantic security,” Sunak said.
The U.K. is among the more than 120 countries supporting the 15-year-old Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) banning cluster bombs.
The U.S., Ukraine and Russia are not part of that treaty.
“When it comes to munitions, I think the first thing to say is this was difficult choice for the U.S. that’s been forced on them by Russia’s war of aggression,” Sunak’s spokesperson told reporters, according to Politico. “As the prime [minister] said over the weekend, the U.K. is a state party to the convention on cluster munitions.… They discussed the commitment the U.K. has under that convention, both not to produce cluster munitions and to discourage their use.”
“They discussed the requirements the prime minister is under because of this convention, and the U.K. is upholding it,” the spokesperson said.
Sunak’s spokesperson added that the U.K.’s “long-standing position” on supporting Ukraine’s induction into NATO has not changed, while Biden expressed in an interview Sunday that Kyiv’s government was “not ready” and that NATO membership should be delayed until after the war with Russia ends. “The prime minister believes and has said previously that Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO, and we want to work with the U.S. and our allies on the pathway for Ukraine to join that alliance,” Sunak’s spokesperson said.
On his way to the summit, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tweeted that it was “unprecedented and absurd” that NATO negotiators were contemplating different conditions and have not yet set forth a concrete timeframe for Kyiv’s membership. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror. Uncertainty is weakness. And I will openly discuss this at the summit,” Zelenskyy wrote.
