FOR THE RECORD - Feb. 28, 2009

Sri Lanka bombs: An article in Section A on Feb. 4 about Sri Lankan government forces fighting with Tamil Tiger rebels reported that United Nations spokesman Gordon Weiss said a hospital in the war zone had been hit by cluster bombs, and the headline said, “U.N. cites Sri Lanka cluster bomb use.” The Times did not, however, publish later wire reports that quoted Weiss as acknowledging that it was artillery fire, not cluster bombs, that hit the hospital. Those later articles quoted Sri Lankan Brig. Udaya Nanayakkara as saying, “We don’t have the facility to fire cluster munitions. We don’t have these weapons.” Weiss said the U.N. accepted the government’s assurance that it didn’t have them.