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Uk sells to india { June 20 2002 }

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   http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,740662,00.html

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,11538,740662,00.html

UK selling arms to India

UK is selling bombs to India

Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday June 20, 2002
The Guardian

The government approved arms sales to India and Pakistan throughout the Kashmir crisis, at a time when ministers were warning about the dispute spreading beyond the region and telling British citizens to leave the area immediately.

Whitehall sanctioned export licences in military equipment ranging from ammunition to missiles to both countries, according to parliamentary answers from the trade minister, Nigel Griffiths, that have since come to light.

They show that the export licences covered bombs, torpedoes, rockets, missiles, combat vessels, howitzers and military aircraft and their components.

Only last week Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, told MPs: "On the issue of arms sales [to India and Pakistan] I may be wrong but I do not recall approving a single arms control licence in the past two months."

Export licences covering more than 200 categories and specific types of equipment were issued for the two countries from December to May.

They were approved as India mounted its largest military build-up in 30 years along the Kashmir line of control after a suicide attack on the Indian parliament on December 13, which New Delhi blamed on militants backed by Pakistan.

Ministers, including Tony Blair, had claimed they were exerting a "calming influence" on the region. At the same time, some 30 British companies were exhibiting their products at a Delhi arms fair and ministers were pressing the Indian government to buy 66 British Hawk jets in a deal worth £1bn.

Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman who obtained the information about the arms exports, said last night: "These figures confirm what many suspected.

"The government policy towards arms exports to India and Pakistan in recent weeks has lacked coherence and appears to be in breach of its own published criteria.

"What on earth is the British government doing granting arms licences as recently as last month when a million soldiers were facing each other across the line of control with the overhanging spectre of a nuclear exchange?"

Criteria covering arms exports state that "the government will not issue an export licence if there is a clear risk that the intended recipient would use the proposed export aggressively against another country or assert by force a territorial claim."

They add: "When considering these risks the government "will take into account...the existence or likelihood of armed conflict between the recipient and another country [and] a claim against the territory of a neighbouring country which the recipient has in the past tried or threatened to pursue by means of force."

The Foreign Office and Department of Trade and Industry said yesterday that decisions on arms export licences were made on a case-by-case basis, and on the basis of the criteria in the export guidelines.

Officials declined to comment on individual agreements but claimed that the British weapons would not be used by the two armies on the line of control.

Paul Eavis, Director of Saferworld, which campaigns against the arms trade, said last night: "Not only has the government been actively lobbying the Indian government to purchase UK Hawk jets, these latest figures suggest they may actually be licensing further arms exports to India and Pakistan.

"If the government are serious about acting as peacemaker, they must place conflict prevention above the interests of UK defence exporters."




fairfax-virginia
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