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European Arms Manufacturers Pump
Weapons into Troubled Regions
By David Cronin
IPS News
February 10, 2008
Despite the EU code of conduct, European corporations continue to
supply the world's most dangerous groups with arms. A stronger law
is needed.
BRUSSELS, Feb 8 (IPS) - One of the most horrific incidents that
followed Kenya's disputed presidential election was the burning to
death of 30 people taking refuge in a church in Eldoret.
Located in the west of the country, Eldoret is also home to an
ammunition factory opened in the mid-1990s by the Belgian company
FN Herstal.
The plant has been blamed earlier for providing supplies to armed
factions in the genocide that swept through Rwanda in 1994. Now
Amnesty International has documented human rights violations by
Kenyan forces using weapons manufactured at the same site.
The continued involvement of a firm from the European Union in
Kenya comes despite a decade-old EU code of conduct on arms sales.
The code stipulates that licenses to export weapons cannot be
issued if there is a threat they will be used for internal
repression or in armed conflicts. But because the bullets in
Eldoret are made outside the EU, they are not covered by the code.
Nor has the code put an end to sales of weapons to countries
encountering political turmoil or civil strife. The EU's latest
annual report on military exports shows that in 2006 licenses for
arms sales to Israel exceeded 1 billion euros (1.4 billion dollars),
despite the Union's professed concern over Israeli attacks on
Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories that year.
And even though EU countries are officially obliged to observe an
embargo on arms sales to Sudan -- because of the conflict in its
western province of Darfur -- licences with a value of over 2
million euros were issued for that country in 2006.
France also agreed to the sale of 25 armored vehicles in 2007 to
neighboring Chad, which is now gripped by fighting between rebel
forces and those loyal to President Idriss Déby.
Another weakness identified by human rights campaigners is that
the code of conduct is not legally binding.
The EU's governments agreed in 2005 to make compliance with it
mandatory. Yet the formal steps needed to give effect to that
decision have not yet been taken, largely due to the stance
adopted by France. Paris has indicated it would only be prepared
to agree to upgrade the code's legal status when an EU arms
embargo on China, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre,
is lifted.
Representatives of 28 countries will gather in New York Feb. 11-15
to consider a worldwide treaty on controlling the arms trade.
The EU has been vocal in its support for such a treaty. Human
rights campaigners have welcomed this support but they say it
would have greater moral and political weight if the Union could
strengthen its own rules on arms sales.
"It (the EU position) is clearly embarrassing, and it looks to the
outside world as inconsistent," says Amnesty's Ollie Sprague.
He argues, too, that the EU's code needs to be strengthened so
that it can address situations where European firms make weapons
outside the Union's borders or through joint ventures with firms
in other countries.
"Globalisation has not escaped the arms trade; it is a factor of
modern commerce," he told IPS. "The code of conduct won't work
unless governments tackle the globalisation factors."
In December, the EU's executive, the European Commission, unveiled
proposals designed to simplify procedures for issuing arms export
licenses followed by national governments within the Union.
According to Günter Verheugen, the European commissioner for
industry, the proposals will enable greater cross-border
cooperation between arms companies in the EU and enhance the
competitiveness of the defense sector.
But Frank Slijper from the Dutch Campaign Against the Arms Trade
says that the Commission's blueprint could make it easier for
European weapons to be sold to countries with an unenviable human
rights record.
At present, Dutch companies making military components have to
name the country where their goods will end up, even if they are
selling those components on to another European firm that will
later export them. Yet under the scheme advocated by the
Commission, France would be listed as the country of destination
if components are transferred from the Netherlands to a French
company. The Dutch would no longer take account of the possibility
that France could re-export the components.
"Generally speaking France has lower barriers on arms exports than
the Dutch have," said Slijper. "We would lose a lot of control."
The Commission has been prepared to take greater account of
arguments put forward by the defense industry than over human
rights concerns, Slijper added. "The European NGO (non-governmental
organization) network has a good voice," he said. "But to me, it
seems way too weak to properly compete with the much stronger
lobbying from the industry. A lot more needs to be done to get a
proper counterbalance to a lobby that is more in favor of smooth
markets and big trade volumes."
In May 2007, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued
an arrest warrant against Ahmad Muhammad Arun, Sudan's
humanitarian affairs minister. He is accused of supplying G3
assault rifles to the Janjaweed, the militia that have caused wide
scale suffering and death in Darfur.
Heckler and Koch manufacture these rifles. Founded in Germany
following the Second World War, H&K was taken over by British
Aerospace in the early 1990s.
"In Darfur, the German H&K rifle has been the main weapon," said
Roman Deckert from the Berlin Information Centre for Transatlantic
Security. "But nobody is really aware of that here."
"Officially, the (EU) code of conduct has been praised by European
governments, but when it comes down to it, it has a lot of
loopholes. Its implementation has been very weak."
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