Weapons Trade Open to All Who Can Pay
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - No one's an outcast at the global weapons bazaar.
Countries with little in common, or even on opposing sides of alliances,
come together in the arms trade, whether they do so openly, under the table
or as in the case of an intercepted missile shipment from North Korea
(news - web sites) to Yemen hidden amid a cargo of cement.
With all but the most advanced weapons, arms experts say, if you've got the
cash, you can get what you want.
And their only surprise when the transaction between North Korea and Yemen
was uncovered was that the United States did something to stop it.
"They say politics makes strange bedfellows," said Jon Wolfsthal, an
authority on nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. "The international arms trade is no different."
U.S. officials decided Wednesday to let the unflagged cargo ship carrying
the Scud missiles sail on its way to Yemen after concluding they had no
legal basis to seize the shipment. Intelligence officials shadowed the ship
for weeks and the Spanish navy stopped it Monday off the Arabian peninsula.
North Korea is an ambitious exporter of ballistic missiles, but not alone
in offering its military wares to practically all comers.
The U.S. government has warned for several years about leapfrogging
advances in missile technology throughout the developing world. More small
countries, using equipment and expertise from Russia, China and North
Korea, are no longer just customers, but weapons exporters in their own right.
The breakup of the Soviet Union also has spawned smaller but sizable
arms-exporting enterprises that are hard to control. Among them, Belarus
has become one of the world's largest arms exporters a country with a
hardline leadership and close ties to Iraq and other states accused of
trying to amass highly destructive weapons.
In a small example of conventional-arms proliferation repeated many times
over, a particularly effective German assault rifle is being manufactured
in perhaps 17 countries most with far less stringent export controls than
the major suppliers face, experts say.
And the two shoulder-fired missiles that narrowly missed an Israeli
airliner recently were the old but still highly effective Soviet SA-7
missiles, versions of which are being made in half a dozen countries or
more, said Edward Laurance, author of "The International Arms Trade."
"God only knows where all those things are," he said.
Some reasons there are more players in the arms trade: licensing agreements
that let one country's weapon be produced in another; readily available
technical information and the spread of reverse engineering taking
something apart, figuring out how it works and coming up with a way to make
it.
Wolfsthal said almost any country able to make cars can also make tanks and
other sophisticated military hardware.
North Koreans "have the incredible ability to reverse-engineer anything
they get their hands on," he said. "The Chinese are taking Russian
airplanes and making their own production lines. The Iranians have bought
not only ballistic missiles from North Korea but a production capability."
The United States is the largest arms merchant by far, delivering almost
half the weapons bought on the world market. America netted $14 billion
from arms exports in 2000, more than double the earnings of its closest
competitor, Britain, with Russia in third.
Like other top arms suppliers, the United States does not sell directly to
hostile nations except in shady deals like the arms-for-hostages
arrangement with Iran in the 1980s.
But this is an amorphous world of shifting relations and military
hand-me-downs.
One result: U.S. forces faced U.S. Stinger missiles in Afghanistan (news -
web sites), leftovers from the arms supplied to the Afghan resistance in
its war against the Soviet Union.
Another: Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 with weapons bought from all major
arms powers, including the United States.
And another: In perhaps the last chance to avoid another Iraq war,
inspectors are searching there for evidence of weapons of mass destruction,
including chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) once used
against Iran when U.S. officials sided with him.
"In the past 20 years, Pakistan was our friend, then our enemy, friend,
enemy, friend," Wolfsthal said. "Alliances change quickly."
North Korea has been selling industriously to anyone who wants to buy.
U.S. allies such as Egypt and Pakistan have bought from North Korea,
experts say, and so has Iran. President Bush (news - web sites) branded
North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil" because of their existing or
potential arsenals of the world's worst weapons.
Yemen is part ally, part trouble spot for the United States its backcountry
seething with anti-American militancy but its leadership cooperating with
the United States in the war against terrorism
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