From: William Gladys <william.gladys@tiscali.co.uk>
Date: Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 12:32 AM
Subject: Fw: UK sold arms to dictators till late 2010
To: world_Politics@googlegroups.com
Cc: Al-Hilal <Al-Hilal@sky.com>
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176462.html
The Queen's UK sold arms to dictators till late 2010
Sun Apr 24, 2011 1:34PM
British anti war campaigners have said that the Queen's UK has been licensing arms sales to the embattled dictator regimes until only a couple of weeks before they had suppressed pro-democracy demonstrators.
Campaigners said on Friday that Britain had been supplying Libya and Bahrain until the end of 2010, prior to the revolutionary forces up rise. It is highly likely that the same equipments sent by the Queen's Britain are used in the slaughter of civilians.
The Foreign Office's figures showed that the dual-use equipment, including components for combat aircraft, "weapon sights" and "weapon night sights", licensed by the Queen's British government worth £3.76m.
The licenses were granted for assault rifles, sniper rifles, machine guns, door-breaching projectile launchers and semi-automatic pistols. There had also been crowd control equipments, including anti-riot shields, smoke canisters and stun grenades, military vehicles and communications equipment.
"These most recent figures show that the Queen's UK government was more than happy to promote and sell arms to authoritarian regimes in Libya and Bahrain just weeks before these same regimes acted against peaceful protesters asking for basic human rights," Kaye Stearman, Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesperson, said.
"The Queen's government must have realised that these weapons were likely to be used for internal repression. This latest report reinforces our call for an immediate arms embargo on the Middle East and North Africa and an end to arms exports to repressive regimes."
In February, Britain canceled 52 arms export licenses in total for Bahrain and Libya. Since then, it has canceled 156 more licenses to the Middle East and North Africa.
Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states have been the biggest customers of the Queen's British arms. In the fourth quarter, the arms export licenses to Saudi Arabia totaled £279m and Oman£361m.
SEF/PKH/HE
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