From: 7/14/99 10:30 AM Subject: [mil-corp] UN calls for "Global Compact" with weapons Network members: It appears that the United Nations is embarking upon a dubious course of involving corporations in matters of peace and diplomacy. This announcement follows a previous announcement (posted to this list) by Kofi Annan's calling for a "global compact" with corporations after his meeting with the International Chamber of Commerce. Steve ___________________________________ Inter Press Service 9 July 1999 Disarmament: U.N. Calls for New Partnership with Arms Industry UNITED NATIONS, (Jul. 8) IPS - A senior U.N. official today called for a "creative partnership" between the world body and the arms manufacturing industry. Jayantha Dhanapala, Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, said the arms manufacturing industry is "a strategic sector of the global economy" which can assist U.N. efforts to curtail illicit arms trafficking. Arms manufacturers, he said, can promote greater transparency, and curb wrongful uses of weapons that have been acquired to serve legitimate national security needs. With appropriate mandates and funding, he said, the United Nations can establish confidence-building measures and transparency, and eliminate arms races. "As it pursues sustainable development, so can it work to foster sustainable disarmament," he told a seminar organized by Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation today. "Working together, we can all the better serve the fundamental principles of international peace and security that remain at the heart of the (U.N.) Charter," he added. In January, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged world business leaders to redesign their corporate practices and policies to conform with basic principles of human rights, international labor laws and environmental guidelines. "I propose that you, the leaders of global business, and we, the United Nations, initiate a global compact of shared values and principles, which will give a human face to the global market," he told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Dhanapala said that there is particular need for a U.N. relationship with the arms industry as it is now in the process of being "globalized." The F-16, one of the frontline fighter planes of the U.S. air force, is being made with components and expertise from nine countries on three continents, he noted. At the same time, the weapons trade is once again on the rise. According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the arms trade grew in real terms by 36 percent between 1995 and 1997, compared with a decline of about 11.2 percent in the decade before 1995. "Ongoing efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and to modernize existing arsenals will no doubt encourage further increases," Dhanapala warned. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the five permanent members of the Security Council -- the United States, France, Britain, China and Russia -- continue to dominate the global arms market. The five big powers accounted for 83 percent of the world's exports of major conventional arms last year, SIPRI said. SIPRI also estimates that total annual sales of major conventional weapons has exceeded $20 billion in recent years. Many of these sales went to the Middle East, which accounted for 40 percent of the world's arms imports in the 1990s, Dhanapala said. The post-Cold War adjustments in military expenditures -- and conversions from defense to civilian industries -- have not been smooth in many countries, he pointed out. While the so-called "peace dividend" remains elusive, he said, television coverage of modern warfare has effectively created an "advertising dividend" for the manufacturers of high-tech weaponry and the countries and alliances that use such weapons. Dhanapala said that during the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf and the recent NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, tiny video cameras enabled hundreds of millions of viewers to "experience vicariously" the flight paths of attacking missiles to their intended targets. "Whatever the rationales for such wars, such imagery contributes to a 'demonstration effect' encouraging the proliferation of such weapons and, potentially, to new arms races," he said. Dhanapala added that the arms manufacturing industry is also getting increasingly sophisticated. Some of the weapons now being produced are more powerful, more miniaturized, more reliable, easier to field and more accurate. As the private sector continues to play a dominating role, the global arms industry has also been undergoing a wave of mergers and acquisitions. According to the publication "Defense Mergers and Acquisitions," defense and aerospace companies have either announced or completed mergers and acquisitions amounting to nearly $60 billion just in the first half of 1999. That amount is already well above the total for all of 1998. Last week, a Pentagon official predicted that a wave of new mergers involving U.S., European and Asian defence firms will take place over the next few months. Dhanapala said customers are now increasingly facing a "buyer's market." Surplus weapons from excess military stocks are being made available at bargain prices, a trend analyzed in "Arsenals on the Cheap," a recent study by the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. Additionally, some buyers are demanding "offsets" -- requirements that a seller invest some portion of their contracts into joint ventures, technology transfers and joint production deals. Dhanapala said the United Nations is involved in several initiatives, including public education, the integration of former combatants into civil society, collection and destruction of excess arms, and studies by expert groups on various specialized aspects of the problem of small arms and ammunition. ____________________________________________________________________