LONDON, May 10 (UPI) -- Lax controls on arms sales are allowing weapons to fall into the hands of embargoed regimes, criminals and terrorists, Amnesty International said Wednesday.
A new report by the human rights organization says many governments are complicit in letting arms brokers and transport contractors exploit legal loopholes preventing the sale of weapons to embargoed countries.
It claims an increasing proportion of arms sold are being exported or diverted to abusive regimes, criminal gangs and armed groups including terrorists, and are fuelling some of the most brutal conflicts in the world. The multi-billion dollar industry is "out of control" and costing hundreds of thousands of lives every year, according to Amnesty's U.K. director, Kate Allen.
British companies have been implicated in the shipment of weapons to the conflict-ridden Congo, it alleges, while hundreds of thousands of weapons left over from the Balkan wars were last year exported, supposedly to Iraq, by a chain of private contractors under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defense.
It also accuses the U.S. government and its allies of using a private Danish shipping company to clandestinely stockpile arms for the Iraq invasion, while U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair still publicly maintained they wanted a diplomatic solution.
The report says the arms trade is subject to only weak and outdated controls, with only 35 countries having any laws to regulate brokers. It cites examples of "unregulated, secretive and unaccountable" arms transporting and brokering, and recommends the establishment of an international arms trade treaty and a series of specific national laws.
Amnesty's report comes ahead of United Nations talks on the issue next month.
