Amnesty calls for controls on arms trade

STRINGENT new measures must be put in place to adequately control Europe’s booming arms trade, Amnesty International said yesterday.

Launching a new Europe-wide report into the EU's burgeoning trade in military and defence equipment, Amnesty researcher Michael Crowley said there were many inadequacies in the way in which exports were controlled in Europe.

"There are flaws in the design and application of the EU code and many breaches and weaknesses in national export controls," he said.

According to the report Undermining Global Security there are now over 400 small arms manufactures in 23 EU countries while the scale of arms sales from Europe is second only to the US.

Yesterday's report, which also focuses on Ireland's increasing role in the trade, concludes that EU arms export controls are dangerously ineffective and not sufficient to protect human rights in the developing world.

Also highlighted is the involvement of an Irish-registered company with an international arms smuggling operation. As revealed in the Irish Examiner last year, Dublin-based Balcombe Investments Limited owned aircraft used by a notorious Russian gun runner to fly several shipments of illegal arms to Africa.

Amnesty development officer and arms trade expert Jim Loughran said Ireland was squarely in the frame when it came to Europe's arms industry with €240m in military exports and €23.7bn of dual use exports since 1997.

"The existing export control system here in Ireland is deeply flawed. It's time to test the credibility of the government's statement that human rights lies at the heart of Ireland's foreign policy," he said.

At yesterday's launch Labour MEP Pronnsias de Rossa called on the Government to lead the way. "There is no reason why this country could not be a leading light on this issue," he said.