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>From http://www.sundayherald.com/25178
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Cash from chaos: how Britain arms both sides
Neil Mackay asks what kind of ethical foreign policy it
is that speaks the words of peace while selling the weapons of war
QUESTION: when is a warmonger not a warmonger? Answer: when he's
Tony Blair. The Prime Minister is perhaps the only man on earth who could visit both
India and Pakistan in January this year and talk peace publicly while privately
discussing how to offload fighter-bombers on the Indian air force at the same time.
To cap that, a few weeks later he ordered the British High Commission in New Delhi
to throw a party for UK arms salesmen in town for an arms fair .
The looming threat of nuclear war between the nations seems to matter not a jot to
Blair and his cabinet. Brushing talk of an arms embargo against India and Pakistan
aside, the government is pushing ahead with arms sales to either nation, including a
�1 billion deal to sell more than 60 Hawk jets to India.
This is not some aberration on the part of a government which within minutes of
getting into power pledged to run an ethical foreign policy -- this is the nuts and
bolts
of how Britain runs its affairs overseas. While the Prime Minister and the Foreign
Secretary adopt the role of international statesmen, trying to broker peace and pull
India and Pakistan back from the brink, the government is going all out to up the ante
between the two with massive arms sales. Little wonder then that people such as
Richard Bingley, of Campaign Against The Arms Trade (CATT), describes the
government's policy on arms as 'diabolical'.
In his view, the arms sales to the sub-continent and the refusal to put an unequivocal
embargo in place represent 'the final nail in the coffin of an ethical foreign policy
-- if
that ever existed'. In 2000 Britain granted some 700 defence export licences to
companies selling weapons to India worth around �64.5 million. These included
components for air-to- surface missiles, aircraft machine guns, armoured personnel
carriers, combat aircraft, torpedoes and combat helicopters. The UK also sold India
military aircraft engines, military communications equipment, tear gas and other riot
control equipment and air-to-surface missiles.
In the same year the UK sold �6m worth of weapons to Pakistan. This included
components for combat helicopters, frigates and naval vessels as well as military
communications equipment, military training aircraft and military utility vehicles. In
1999, the UK sold �57.5m worth of weapons to India and �11.5m to Pakistan. Britain,
as the list shows, is happy to sell the same weapons to two countries on the brink of
all-out war. The government is flying right in the face of the EU code of conduct on
weapons sales.
The code says weapons must not be exported if they could: affect regional stability;
provoke or prolong armed conflicts; be used for external aggression; or to assert by
force a territorial claim. Given the stand-off between India and Pakistan, UK weapons
sales appear to contravene all those restrictions.
Yet yesterday, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said arms sales to the sub- continent
need not be suspended during the present tensions because they are 'not relevant'
to the current fears of war. That's pretty hard to reconcile with the fact that
components for Jaguar bomb ers, supplied to India by Britain last year, are being
upgraded to give them the capability to carry nuclear missiles. BAE has so far
licensed the production of 126 Jaguars in India.
Straw even said: 'I certainly approve of a continuation of commercial relations with
India and Pakistan.' He then went on to back BAE in its negotiations to sell Hawk jets
to India. The response from cam paigners like Richard Bingley was one of stupefied
disbelief: 'It's the first time I've heard arms sales have nothing to do with war. If
arms
sales don't have anything to do with war, what on earth are they for?'
Straw's comments came as he simultaneously told Britons to leave India as fears of
a nuclear strike by either side mounted. Just to add to the double-talk, he went on to
say that he had very real concerns about the tension spilling over into a pre-emptive
nuclear strike launched by either side.
'One of the difficulties is that,while in the stand-off between the Soviet bloc and
Nato
there was a highly developed doctrine of mutually- assured destruction and many
detailed arrangements were made to avoid conflict by mistake, the arrangements
between India and Pakistan are frankly rudimentary.'
BAE, which makes the Hawk jets, is sure the deal will be closed -- barring, one
supposes, atomic war wiping out the nations they intend to sell to. Ministers including
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon have been pressing India to clinch the deal. And
Deputy PM John Pres cott did the same during a visit in February billed as talks on
'sustainable development'. His constit uency is home to BAE Systems.
Over the past seven years, weapons to the value of almost �15bn have been sold by
Britain to India and Pakistan, much of it funded by subsidies paid for by the taxpayer.
Although the arms trade accounts for just 2% of UK exports, it gets more than
�800m in subsidies from the Export Credit Guarantee Department.
A few weeks after Blair's January 'peace mission' to India and Pakistan, some 30 UK
companies took part in India's biggest-ever arms fair, Defexpo 2002. The Britons
involved were the same salesmen who were treated to champagne and canapes at
the British High Commission in New Delhi. The British delegation occupied an entire
hall and happily peddled howitzers, anti- aircraft guns and tanks. Exhibition
literature
said that 'with the recent political developments in south-east Asia', India was a ripe
market to expand into.
The UK's grandly titled 'national pavilion' at Defexpo 2002 was organised by the UK's
Defence Manufacturers Association 'with funding support from Trade Partners UK
available to British firms who participate'. Trade Partners is a tax-funded government
service, part of the Department of Trade and Industry.
UK companies will also be attending Pakistan's state-sponsored arms fair, Ideas
2002, in September -- unless, of course, Karachi is no longer standing.
All this arms dealing in the subcontinent by Britain is driven by one thing:
undercutting the Russians, who until now have been the main dealer to the region.
It's paid off, too. After the US, Britain, under ethical Labour, ranks as the second
biggest defence exporter on earth.
Labour MP Roger Berry, who chairs parliament's arms export committee, has
accused the government of showing the 'morality of a drug dealer' in its attitude to
arms deals to India and Pakistan. Martin O'Neill, chair of the Commons trade and
industry select committee, said: 'There are very few countries with nuclear
capabilities, we should not be pouring petrol on a fire.' More than 70 MPs have
signed a motion expressing concern about the Hawk sales.
Inflaming the situation could, perhaps, be defined by the government's decision to
put a Ministry of Defence official into New Delhi tasked specifically to sell weapons.
MPs, anti-arms campaigners and the public can't reconcile how this can happen
when Jack Straw says that the running sore over Kashmir is 'potentially more
dangerous than the crisis in the Middle East'. That must be why Britain invited
officials from Pakistan to the Farnborough Air Show in July 2000 to buy high-
powered military equipment. And maybe it was because Britain wanted to quell
tensions that a total of 64 military commanders from Pakistan and India were trained
in Britain last year.
As Richard Bingley of CATT says: 'The government says it is pursuing peace, yet it
sells weapons to countries on the brink of war. Its own code of conduct says it should
cease arms sales. Some may say that's warmongering. What I say is that it will inject
tension and additional conflict into a region which could end in the death of millions
of
innocent civilians.'
Additional reporting by Lachlan Mackinnon
Do you have an opinion on this issue? Air it in the forum
�2002 smg sunday newspapers ltd. no.176088. all rights reserved
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