Sun, Mar 31, 2002 page8

• Rein in the shadowy arms traders

  • By Jonathan Power
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  No other legitimate business is as corrupt as the arms trade. That the obvious needs to be said again is only because of two more scandals that have surfaced, both involving murder, and still the countries that are responsible for 90 percent of the world's arms sales continue to allow their arms companies to do their dirty business with only minimal controls and interference.

  First, on March 19, came the suicide of a former Belgium government minister who for 10 years had been awaiting trial for the murder of a former deputy prime minister, Andre Cools. Cools, it has been suspected, was killed to prevent him denouncing the illegal sale of documents to an arms manufacturer. It was an offshoot of the same long-running scandal that brought down the Belgian secretary-general of NATO over alleged bribes paid to the Socialist Party by Agusta, the Italian helicopter group, and Dassault, the French plane maker.

  Then two days later a furore erupted in Taiwan over a government report alleging that France betrayed Taiwan's confidence by passing top-secret information to China about the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. The allegations now coursing through Taiwan's outspoken press have many layers: from evidence that prominent political figures in Beijing were paid to mute their protest over the deal to suggestions that the decision to buy the frigates from French company Thomson-CSF instead of from South Korea was influenced by payoffs. Already former foreign minister of France, Roland Dumas, has been convicted of taking money improperly from his lover, who, working as an arms lobbyist, tried to get him to drop his objections to the frigate sale.

  But this is not all. A captain in the Taiwan navy, Yin Ching-feng (尹清楓), who had investigated irregularities in the frigate deal, was murdered and left on a beach in 1993. At the time, military coroners quickly announced his death as suicide. But an independent autopsy arranged by his widow found that his head had been bashed in. Now a new government report recounts that military investigators had withheld evidence that would have proved his death as murder.

  The whole arms industry is as seedy as it comes and its recent history of malfeasance alone is enough to fill volumes. Also linked to the dealings of arms companies or their lobbyists were the deaths of an investigative British journalist in Chile and Swedish prime minister Olof Palme.

  Shortly after the death of Palme, allegations swirled through the Swedish and Indian media about the arms manufacturer Bofors paying bribes to senior Indian government officials, including then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. Although it has proved impossible for Indian investigators to make all the connections -- and we may never know exactly what went on or whether Palme was implicated even in an indirect way -- it still leaves a nasty taste in many Swedish mouths today.

  Fourteen years ago, not long after Palme's murder, I interviewed his successor, Ingvar Carlsson, and some of the top officials charged with regulating arms sales. All came out with the same mantra: "We need exports as our arms manufacturers couldn't make it otherwise." It seemed then, as it does today, that nothing, not even murder, could shake the deep political foundations of the arms business. And this is as true for the US or the UK and France as it is for Sweden.

  The economic commentator of the Financial Times, Samuel Brittan, who has spent a distinguished journalistic career puncturing the economic posturing of Western governments, has now joined battle with the arms industry.

  "The supposedly clinching argument," he writes, "is that if Britain does not sell arms to odious dictatorships, the orders would go instead to other countries that will take the jobs instead."

  This, he believes, is bogus economics. There is no great lump of labor engaged in making specific products like arms. Jobs are constantly changing in any advanced capitalist economy. In Britain alone well over 3 million people leave the unemployment registry each year, well over half to new jobs or training for new jobs. In comparison, Britain's arms exports employ a mere 130,000 workers. Even if arms, as they do, often provide a high marginal return, the resources involved can still be shifted to other exports.

  Yet in country after country the arms exporters give the appearance of holding their governments by the tail. Despite early promises, Prime Minister Tony Blair has delayed for years the introduction of legislation to overhaul Britain's arms exports. While Canada has suggested a ban on arms sales to any "non-state actors" like rebel groups, terrorists and crime syndicates, the George W. Bush administration has resisted a blanket prohibition, fearing that it would impinge on future efforts to provide covert military aid in foreign conflicts. Ironically, one example that used to be given was the "successful" role in aiding the resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Need one say more?

  Jonathan Power is a freelance columnist based in London.

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