According to the link I posted, white phosphorous can be used as an incendiary weapon, and in that case it will be considered as such from the legal point of view.
The ICRC official's statement leave no room for semantic interpretation.
I don't claim anything in this regard since the text is self-explanatory. There's nothing ambiguous about the fact that white phosphorous can and has abundantly been used a weapon in the past (e.g. WW1 etc).
That would be a selective citation. In fact there's no contradiction between this and the earlier statements of the ICRC arms experts which I quoted.
Here is what the document is stating prior to that excerpt:
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They are clearly distinguishing between two possible uses of white phosphorous: as part of smoke grenades or as part of exploding munitions. As far as exploding munitions are concerned, it is claimed that they were never employed on built-up areas, nor for anti-personnel purposes. Thence the authors are actually reiterating that white phosphorous may very well be used in an anti-personnel role, in which case it will have to be considered an incendiary weapon.
It's precisely because the munitions allegedly weren't used in densely populated areas that the inquires concludes to the absence of a war crime. This perfectly reflects the rule relative to the prohibition of incendiary weapons as per Protocol III, Article 2.2 of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
To summarize:
* White phosphorous shells are fired with the purpose of generating smoke, while observing general rules relative to the protection of civilians in war =
- white phosphorous does not qualify as an incendiary weapon
- no war crime
* White phosphorous shells are fired with the purpose of killing combatants or damaging materiel in areas where no civilians are concentrated =
- white phosphorous does qualify as an incendiary weapon
- but no war crime
* White phosphorous shells are fired with the purpose of killing combatants or damaging material in areas where civilians are concentrated =
- white phosphorous does qualify as an incendiary weapon
- war crime
* White phosphorous shells are fired with the purpose of killing civilians or damaging civilian infrastructure not relevant to the war effort =
- it doesn't matter whether white phosphorous is an incendiary weapon or not
- war crime
All of which was perfectly expanded upon by the ICRC in 2009: