ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 23 (UPI) -- Officials of British companies offering war-related products at a defense conference in Abu Dhabi said the Middle East is now the main growth area.
The British companies represented at the 10th annual International Defense Exhibition and Conference include BAE, Thales UK and Motorola UK, London newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian reported Tuesday.
Western war-products companies, including the United States' Lockheed Martin and L-3 Communications, France's Renault and Germany's Rheinmetall AG, are determined to win their piece of the lucrative Middle East market, the Telegraph said.
"The post-financial crisis reality is that today it is clearly the Middle East that is seeing the biggest growth," said Herve Guillou, president of Cassidian Systems, a subsidiary of EADS, a European aviation defense group.
This year Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Jordan will spend $66 billion on defense, said Frost & Sullivan, a research company.
As he toured the Persian Gulf region with defense manufacturers, British Prime Minister David Cameron defended Britain's weapons exports and said small gulf countries should not be left to fend for themselves.
"The idea that we should expect small and democratic countries like Kuwait to be able to manufacture all their means of defense seems to me completely at odds with reality," he said.
