9:29 PM Apr 24, 1996

GHALI IS CRITICAL OF RICH NATIONS SELLING ARMS TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

"This senseless trend must be reversed," Boutros-Ghali said of the all-too-common exercise practised by most Western nations.

"Richer countries manufacture and sell the weapons to poorer countries at a healthy profit. The poorer countries not only lose scarce revenue to arms acquisition, but also frequently fall victim to these imported instruments of violence," he said Tuesday.

Boutros-Ghali pointed out that these "same wealthy states then spend much greater sums on emergency relief for the victims of the wars their arms made possible."

The Secretary-General has urged both developed and developing nations to curb the flow of small arms, which cause the most devastation and destruction in the ethnic conflicts spreading across Third World nations.

"The world is awash with them and traffic in them is very difficult to monitor, let alone intercept," he said in a report released last year.

Boutros-Ghali said that progress since 1992 in controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and major weapons systems must be followed by similar progress in conventional arms, particularly with respect to light weapons.

Currently, the five major exporters of conventional weapons are also the five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: the U.S., France, Britain, Russia and China.

The annual Human Development Report commissioned by the U.N. Development Programme has accused the Big Five of "reprehensible" behaviour for making money out of Third World misery.

"The arms business is one of the most reprehensible sectors of international trade," the 1994 report said. And arms traders have no compunction about making profits out of poverty, it said.

These five countries, the report said, sell 86 percent of all the conventional weapons exported to Third World nations.

These weapons -- ranging from sophisticated jet fighters to nuclear submarines -- are sold to countries "where millions of people lack the most basic means of survival."

The Big Five have also been accused of selling two-thirds of these weapons to 10 developing nations -- among them some of the world's poorest, such as Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, which account for nearly 30 percent of developing country imports.

Even more regrettable is that arms dealers continue to ship weapons to potential trouble spots, showing little concern about fanning the flames of conflict," the report noted.

Addressing the U.N. Disarmament Commission Monday, Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia said it would be a step backwards if the current session did not reach agreement on guidelines and principles for arms transfers.

He said it was time for the United Nations to take stock of its annual Arms Register where member states voluntarily declare their arms exports and imports.

But since the Register was established in 1992, only about 85 of the U.N.'s 185 member states have participated in the exercise.

"Unless the world's leading arms exporters, who also happen to be permanent members of the Security Council and the acknowledged nuclear states, cooperated, the future of the Arms Register was bleak," he said.

The Register is considered weak because most of the countries making declarations have been withholding information.

Arms contracts in the U.S. usually have "non-disclosure" clauses which prevent sellers from revealing the types of equipment they sell or even identifying their clients.

Ambassador Gustavo Albin of Mexico said that the Disarmament Commission has been meeting for the third year to take up the issue of international arms transfers, "an increasingly topical item given the violence that was continuing in many countries of the world".

"Vast numbers of weapons were being transferred virtually without controls. Such an activity posed a serious threat and caused great loss of life, particularly among civilians," he said.

The Commission is also discussing the issue of illegal arms transfers which Ambassador Emilio Cardenas of Argentina described as "one of the great areas of concern for the entire international community."

He said there was a need to establish a rational limit on the amount that a state could spend on weapons as a direct function of its gross national product (GNP).

He suggested that financial loans by international organisations be considered to support those countries attempting to control their arms transfers.