United Press International,
BRUSSELS: Despite the European Union's arms embargo against China, EU weapons manufacturers bagged $405 million worth of licenses to sell military goods to the communist state and exported a further $86 million of hardware in 2004, official figures obtained by United Press International show.
The EU banned arms sales to China in 1990 in response to the Tiananmen Square massacre a year earlier. But this did not stop arms manufacturers from eight of the bloc's 25 members exporting military equipment to the world's most populous country last year.
“The figures seem to make a bit of a mockery of the European Union's claim that the arms embargo is still in place,” said Roy Isbister of the London-based advocacy group Saferworld.
“The spirit of the 1990 statement is that military goods should not be exported to China, but member states are interpreting this in very different ways.”
France, which has lobbied aggressively for the arms embargo to be lifted, would be by far the biggest beneficiary of such a move.
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