Bruce Kent:Arms also sold to exert influence

Veteran peace campaigner Bruce Kent is totally opposed to the British government selling arms for numerous reasons, including using such sales to exert political influence on other regimes. “I object to selling arms to countries around the world. It is bad economy. Bad morals.” said Kent, the 82-year old vice-president of Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement. In an interview with IRNA, he suggested that Britain had no scruples whatsoever in selling weapons, saying that they were sold to “anyone who has got the money.” “Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship we sell arms to. We sold them to Colonel Gaddafi until a little while ago, to Bahrain,” Kent said, recalling that the UK also supported Saddam Hussein's regime during Iraq's war against Iran. He did not believe that the British government's licensing system for selling arms were effective at all, saying he “did not accept for one minute” they were restrictive. “First you have no control over where weapons go once they are sold,” said the former general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He cited the example of Libya previously supplying UK weaponry to the IRA in Northern Ireland that were used against British soldiers. “It is an attempt also for political power because you sell the weapon; then you have to send the service man to fix the weapon and supply the spare parts so that country comes under your influence whether that weapon is used or not,” he said. Kent, a former Catholic priest, was speaking with IRNA after joining campaigners protesting against the opening on Tuesday of the biennial Defence and Security Equipment International (DSEi) in east London, one of the world's largest arms fairs. As a life-long peace campaigner, he spoke of the importance of building up the “public opinion climate” and argued that it was “now on our side.” “It took 50 years to end slave trade. At the beginning there was no public awareness. Same is with arm sales, people are now much more aware of the poverty caused, wars caused, the dictators we are keeping in place.” he said. Kent was also scathing about Britain selling weapons to dictatorships, saying it was not to countries to defend themselves but about countries keeping its own people in place. It was “complete double standards” by the UK government at a time when they claim to uphold human rights and support reform, he said.