Huge jump in arms sales to Israel
· Military export licences to country almost double
· Government accused of arming repressive regimes
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday April 6, 2006
The Guardian
The number of arms export licences granted for countries the government accuses of human rights abuses increased significantly over the past year, the latest official figures show.
They also show that licences for weapons sales to Saudi Arabia increased by 25% last year, to £25m. They included sales of assault rifles, riot control equipment and body armour.
Licences for British arms sales to Israel last year amounted to nearly £25m, almost double the previous year. The licences covered the export of armoured vehicles and missile components.
Quarterly annual figures appear separately on the Foreign Office website and were collated by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (Caat), which alerted the Guardian to them. They show that licences were also approved for sales of arms valued at more than £12.5m to Indonesia. Amnesty International last year reported extrajudicial killings carried out by Indonesian security forces in Aceh and West Papua. British-made armoured vehicles were reported to have been deployed against protesters in West Papua in November last year.
Israel, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia are among 11 out of 20 countries described by the FO in its 2005 annual human rights report as "major countries of concern" to which the government licensed military equipment.
The sales cleared for Israel are the highest since 1999. This was before Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, sought assurances from Israel that equipment supplied by the UK was not being used against civilians and in the occupied territories. In 2002 the government said it was tightening controls on arms exports to the country after it found that assurances had been breached.
The increase in arms export licences to Saudi Arabia came at a time the government was negotiating an agreement, worth an estimated £8bn to BAE Systems, to equip Saudi Arabia's armed forces with Typhoon combat aircraft, formerly known as the Eurofighter.
Indonesia is now regarded as an ally against Islamist extremism and Tony Blair held out the prospect of more British weapons sales on his recent visit to the country.
Britain last year licensed military equipment sales to 14 of the 17 countries involved in major armed conflict, Caat said yesterday. It added that Britain had also licensed weapons equipment to 10 countries at the bottom third of the UN human development index.
The FO said last night that all exports were considered under the government's official criteria. "The bottom line is that no piece of kit is used for external aggression or internal repression," it said, adding that it believed the government's arms export licensing system was stringent and transparent. "The government has committed itself to leading international negotiations on an arms trade treaty to stop global arms flows to war zones and repressive regimes," Mike Lewis of Caat said yesterday. "Yet in the last twelve months it has licensed weapons exports precisely to these regimes ... The government must stop arming the world's human rights abusers.
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