Amnesty aims for last post on arms

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL aims to have more than 50,000 postcards from around Europe land on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s desk by May 1 to try and get him to push for tighter control of the arms trade during the EU presidency.

Anne Marlborough, EU presidency officer with the Irish section of Amnesty International, believes the postcard campaign will highlight the depth of feeling across Europe about the poor control of arms sales and the manufacture of weapons components by individual states.

Ten countries will join the EU on May 1 and Ms Marlborough believes this is the perfect time for Europeans to show their contempt at the growing arms trade.

Amnesty offices in Bulgaria, Malta, Cyprus, Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Latvia, Turkey, Lithuania will be supplied with the postcards and members of the organisation will then be urged to send the postcard to the Taoiseach, in his role as president of the EU.

Although there is an EU code of conduct on arms exports, Ms Marlborough said it was not thoroughly monitored and is not enforced. “We will be calling on Mr Ahern to put this code of conduct on a formal footing and ensure that the arms trade is properly monitored and enforced,” she said.

While the code of conduct is due to be reviewed, instead of EU commissioners examining themselves, Amnesty wants non-governmental organisations such as itself and Oxfam to get involved in the review, as well as individual governments.

“One of the problems is that one State might not want to trade with a certain country because of their human rights’ record, and another country will.

“This can create competition for contracts,” Ms Marlborough said.