Pact curbs shoulder-fired missile trade -diplomats
Source: Reuters
By Mark Heinrich VIENNA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - At least 25,000 shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile systems have been seized from illicit traders under a little-known arms control pact, but twice as many are unaccounted for, Western diplomats said on Thursday. They spoke at a meeting marking the 10th anniversary of the Wassenaar Arrangement, a 40-nation group dedicated to curbing the spread of conventional arms and related items to areas of regional conflict and to terrorists. Diplomats said the spread of so-called Man-Portable Air Defence Systems, or MANPADs -- missiles fired from a shoulder-held launcher and able to bring down aircraft -- had become a serious concern for the Wassenaar group. Since 1996, participating states had intercepted "upwards of 25,000-30,000" of the units on suspicion that they were destined for combatants or possibly terrorists in regions in conflict or chaos regions, a senior Western diplomat said. "The gist of our concern is that MANPADs can fall into the hands of terror groups, as we saw in Mombasa," he said, alluding to a shoulder-fired missile attack in 2002 on an Israeli charter jet in Kenya, which missed. "We estimate there could be up to around 50,000 MANPADs in circulation outside official stockpiles. Now these things are on the move..." he said, requesting anonymity in exchange for discussing confidential information. "We are trying to ensure border authorities in individual states are looking carefully at boxes as long as this table that look suspicious or are going to a strange destination. We are worried about brokers disguising (missiles) as other goods. "It would cause havoc if they got into the hands of al Qaeda. We have no information whether that is the case." Most major arms-exporting states are in the Wassenaar fold, such as the European Union, Norway, the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan, Australia, Turkey, South Korea and South Africa. China, India, Pakistan and North Korea are not members. Diplomats said that, in the past decade, member states had drawn up a 200-page control list of about 300 kinds of munitions and almost 1,000 dual-use goods and technologies. "Over the past decade (we) have made significant contributions toward regional and international security and stability by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in (such arms) transfers, thus preventing destabilising accumulations," the group said in a statement.
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