THE European Union has regulations governing the production and sale of every conceivable product from butter and beef to sausages and bananas, but none that regulate the deadliest trade of all, the arms industry, the director of the Catholic aid agency Trocaire, Mr Justin Kilcullen, said.
He was speaking at a press conference in Dublin organised by Trocaire, Amnesty International, Pax Christi and the Africa Faith and Justice Network to issue a joint declaration of support for the adoption of an international code of conduct to control the export of arms.
The Dublin declaration coincided with similar declarations in other cities across the world including London, Washington, Paris, Madrid, Rome, The Hague, Bonn and Johannesburg.
The declaration calls for a code to prohibit arms sales to countries at war or on the brink of war prohibit such sales to countries seriously violating human rights require suppliers to assess the economic effects of arms sales and require recipients to participate fully in the UN Register of Conventional Arms.
Mr Kilcullen said previous attempts to limit arms sales had been largely ineffective because international controls were not binding and countries interpreted them as they wished.
He cited the case of Nigeria, where after the cancellation of the 1993 elections and military takeover EU member states had announced that applications for arms sales would be reviewed on a "case by case" basis with a "presumption of denial".
Despite this, the export of 80 Vickers tanks had proceeded as planned, and 30 export licences were granted by the British government for "non lethal" weapons. These covered machine guns, bombs, torpedoes, land mines, missiles, explosives, riot control weapons and military vehicles.