Report: U.S. arms prop up dictators

WASHINGTON, May 24 (UPI) -- Most U.S. arms sales to the developing world still go to help dictatorial regimes, a new report says.

The New York-based World Policy Institute found a majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world go to regimes defined as undemocratic by the State Department.

The report released Tuesday also alleged U.S.-supplied arms are involved in a majority of the world's active conflicts.

"Billions of U.S. arms sales to Afghanistan in the 1980s ended up empowering Islamic fundamentalist fighters across the globe," according to report co-author William Hartung, director of the institute's Arms Trade Resource Center.

"Our current policy of arming unstable regimes could have similarly disastrous consequences, with U.S.-supplied weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, insurgents, or hostile governments," the report said.

"Perhaps no single policy is more at odds with President Bush's pledge to 'end tyranny in our world' than the United States' role as the world's leading arms exporting nation," said Frida Berrigan, the report's other co-author.