GENOA, Italy, May 18 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Sunday said he hoped a Dublin conference on cluster bombs will outlaw the deadly weapons by agreeing on a strong international convention.

"I hope that, thanks to the responsibility of all the participants, a strong and credible international instrument can be achieved," he said after his noon prayer during a visit to the northwestern Italian city of Genoa.

Representatives of more than 100 nations gather in Dublin on Monday to finalise an anti-cluster munitions treaty.

Cluster munitions open in mid-air and scatter as many as several hundred "bomblets" over wide areas. They often fail to explode, creating virtual mine fields that can kill or injure anyone who comes across them.

The U.N. Development Program says cluster munitions have caused more than 13,000 confirmed injuries and deaths around the world, the vast majority of them in Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon.

The world's top producers, users and stockpilers of cluster bombs -- the United States, Israel, China, Russia, India and Pakistan -- will skip the conference. But diplomats at the United Nations say Washington is encouraging allies to adopt positions that could lead to a watered-down treaty.

In his comments on cluster bombs, made after an address to young people, the pope said "it is necessary to correct the errors of the past and avoid that they are repeated in the future". He referred to them as "deadly weapons".

The pope said he was praying for the victims of cluster bombs and their families as well as for the successful outcome of the Dublin meeting. (Reporting by Philip Pullella; editing by Sami Aboudi)

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