NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) -- The White House or Congress should put U.S. arms sales to the developing world under tighter control, an arms control expert said Tuesday.
"The time has come to impose greater scrutiny on U.S. arms transfers and military aid programs," said William Hartung, director of the Arms Resource Center of the New York-based World Peace Institute and co-author of a new report on U.S. arms sales.
"They are not simply another tool in the foreign policy toolbox, to be used to win friends and intimidate adversaries as needed," he said.
Hartung urged the implementation of the underlying assumptions of U.S. arms export law.
They call for arming nations only for purposes of self-defense, and avoiding arms sales to nations that engage in patterns of systematic human rights abuses.
This shift could come either via new congressional legislation or policy initiatives by the Bush administration, he argued.
