http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/zones/sundaytimesNEW/business/business112375323 4.aspx
Arms sales kept 'secret' Thursday August 11, 2005 11:40 - (SA) By Peter Honey In a breach of its own arms control law, government is trying to conceal the identity of countries that buy weapons from SA. For the first time, the Conventional Arms Control Directorate, a defence force agency that must by law report annually to parliament on SA's arms exports, has classified as "secret" its report for sales last year and 2003. The report is more than a year late in providing the 2003 statistics and more than five months late for those of last year. It was handed to members of parliament's defence portfolio committee on August 2, with instructions that they were not to make public the addenda that contain the names of client countries and the classification of the weapons they bought. When approached for a copy of the report last week, the directorate's acting director, Dumisani Dladla, said that he would not provide it as it was secret. He conceded that the National Conventional Arms Control Act stipulated that the report should be released annually, but added that "there is a limitation to that". He said it was being kept secret "because some contracting countries do not want their purchases publicised". The FM has, however, obtained the report by other means, and is publishing the names of major arms purchasers in the accompanying table. The report shows that total exports increased 20% to just over R3 billion in 2003 and declined to R2,7 billion last year. The biggest purchasers last year of "category A" weapons (heavy or powerful equipment, such as cannons, missiles, bombs, grenades and other explosives) were India, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Colombia. The same countries were also big customers of these weapons in 2003, along with Singapore, Malaysia and Jordan. Limited details of the report were publicised last week by DA defence spokesman Rafeek Shah, who accused government of undermining the principles of the act. He declined to give further details to the FM, and would not pass on the report, saying he was prevented from doing so by parliamentary code. He accused the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), the ministerial body that governs the marketing, export and transfer of SA-made conventional weapons, of violating not only the act, but the concerns of human rights organisations about weapons sales to countries with poor human rights records. Financial Mail ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12hl2fisq/M=362329.6886306.7839369.3040540/D=groups/S=1705323667:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1123768450/A=2894321/R=0/SIG=11dvsfulr/*http://youthnoise.com/page.php?page_id=1992 ">Fair play? Video games influencing politics. Click and talk back!</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
