Military - new material (27)
01 January 1999
Out of control: the loopholes in UK controls of the arms trade. Oxfam (1998) pp28. This is the second Oxfam investigation into UK involvement in the arms trade and arms export controls. The first report, Small Arms, Wrong Hands (April 1998) focused on legal sales and revealed that, despite the Labour Party's professed "ethical foreign policy", export licenses were being granted to countries where human rights abuses, armed conflict and poverty were endemic. The new report looks at UK controls on legal sales and the "loopholes in arms exports that are exploited to allow the unregulated transfer of small arms to...countries where they may contribute to human rights abuses, prolong existing conflict and poverty". The three loopholes investigated in the report are: i. arms brokered by UK companies without passing through the UK (Sandline and Sierra Leone, Peter Bleach and Border Technology and Innovation and Mil-Tec and Rwanda and Zaire); ii. arms produced overseas under license (Heckler & Koch, Land Rover and Otokar) and iii. the failings of end-use monitoring and control (Oxfam, Occidental Airlines and Kent International Airport, the Scott Report). The report concludes that: "The unregulated or ineffectively regulated trade in arms continues to exacerbate conflict, contribute to human rights abuses and cause enormous human suffering around the world."
An uncertain future for central European defence industries Paul Cook. Briefing paper No. 20, International Security Information Service, January 1999.
The future of the European Union's common foreign and security policy: conference report. International Security Information Service (Brussels), 24-25 September 1998.
Nuclear futures: western European options for nuclear risk reduction, Martin Butcher, Otfried Nassauer & Stephen Young. Research report 98.5 BASIC-BITS. Western European nations should take concrete steps to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons. Examples are reducing the alert status, ending deployment of non-strategic weapons and halting first-use policies.
Europe-Asia Arms Trade Challenges ASEM Security Dialogue, Transnational Institute 1998. While arms to Asia have been overwhelmingly from the US, the European arms industry is gaining a larger market share in the region.
Parliamentary debates
Strategic Defence Review Lords 8.12.98. cols. 812-828
Strategic Defence Review Lords 8.12.98. cols. 845-897
Major Eric Joyce Commons 9.12.98. cols. 296-302
NATO Lords 14.12.98. cols. 1208-1224
Iraq Lords 17.12.98. cols. 1521-1552
Iraq Commons 17.12.98. cols. 1097-1193
Arms Trade Lords 20.1.99. cols. 667-690