(UK) MP attacks (William) Hague over review of arms sales to Arab regimes

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Source: The Guardian

MP attacks Hague over review of arms sales to Arab regimes

Senior MPs have delivered a severe rebuke to the government over its approval of the sale of a wide range of arms, including sniper rifles, machine guns and "crowd control goods" to countries in the Middle East and north Africa.

Britain supplied the weapons despite official guidelines stating that exports of equipment that could be used for internal repression must be blocked. In a damning report earlier this year, the Commons arms export controls committees demanded an urgent review of exports to "authoritarian regimes worldwide".

They referred specifically to the Mubarak and Gaddafi regimes in Egypt and Libya, to Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Observers said military trucks sent by the Saudis to help suppress demonstrations in Bahrain were British.

In a written statement slipped out earlier this week, the foreign secretary, William Hague, said that in light of the committees' findings, the government had conducted a review. It "concluded that there was no evidence of any misuse of controlled military goods exported from the United Kingdom". Hague added: "Consultations with our overseas posts revealed no evidence that any of the offensive naval, air or land-based military platforms used by governments in north Africa or the Middle East against their own populations during the Arab spring, were supplied from the United Kingdom."

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jul/21/uk-arms-sales-middle-east