By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 14 1997 (IPS)

A new peace-keeping role for the United Nations should be to provide support destroying arms stockpiles in countries recovering from military conflicts, says the 16-member Panel of Governmental Experts on Small Arms.

The world body should support “all appropriate post-conflict initiatives,” including the disposal and destruction of weapons, the experts contend.

The panel cites the example of Mali where thousands of small arms handed over by ex-combatants were publicly destroyed in a March 1996 ceremony attended by a representative of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The current Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, last month expressed the hope that the process started in Mali would contribute towards the elimination of all illicit traffic in small arms throughout the region.

The Chairman of the group of arms experts, Mitsuro Donowaki of Japan, says U.N. member states should consider destroying their surplus weapons to prevent them from falling into the hands of criminal elements or from being transferred to other conflict zones.

“Africa, Central America and South Asia are three regions with an excessive accumulation and circulation of small arms,” he said.

When 12 years of internal war ended in El Salvador in 1992, a total of some 75,000 people had been killed, Donowaki said. Today, some 8,000 people are being killed each year in that country by small arms and light weapons left behind after the war, he added.

In a 44-page study, the experts found that “in one way or another, virtually every part of the U.N. system is dealing with the direct and indirect consequences of recent armed conflicts fought mostly with small arms and light weapons.”

Annan says that most of the deaths in recent military conflicts in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, have been caused primarily by small arms. The panel of experts identified small arms to include assault rifles, pistols, sub-machine guns, light machine guns, mortars, portable anti-aircraft guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank missile and rocket systems, hand grenades and anti-personnel land mines.

“While small arms and light weapons are designed for use by armed forces, they have unique characteristics that are also of particular advantage for irregular warfare or terrorist and criminal action,” the study points out.

Natalie Goldring of the Washington-based British American Security Information Council says that one of the most significant recommendations of the panel is the guidelines to ensure that weapons are destroyed when conflicts end.

“Recycling weapons from one conflict to another is a major problem,” Goldring told IPS, “and the panel’s recommendations would help stop this”.

She said that study released by the panel was one of the few official documents to even deal with light weapons, and it includes important suggestions for limiting these flows. One of the recommendations was to establish a regional network of information-sharing on small arms.

Donowaki said that during panel discussions, there was a suggestion for a regional register of small arms. But it was difficult to register small arms, he said, because they numbered in the millions. In Central America alone, there were two million such arms. In Afghanistan, there were 10 million, while in West Africa there were more than seven million.

Donowaki also said that between 1945 and 1990 the number of assault rifles produced worldwide was around 55 million to 72 million. The bulk of this weaponry consisted of Russian-made AK-47 rifles used extensively in conflicts throughout the world.

At present, there are more than 55 nations where the AK-47 is the standard infantry weapon for the army. But the deadly Russian rifle – cloned in Eastern Europe and in Afghanistan – is also the favorite weapon of most guerrilla movements throughout the world.

In a separate study on child soldiers, former Mozambican First Lady Gracha Machel says that the world’s arms manufacturers are now mass-producing inexpensive light weapons making it tragically easy for children to be recruited and trained as soldiers.

“Previously, the more dangerous weapons were either heavy or complex, but these guns are so light that children can use them, and so simple they can be stripped and reassembled by a child of 10,” says Machel, in her report released last year.

“In Uganda, an AK-47 automatic machine gun can be purchased for the cost of a chicken and, in northern Kenya, it can be bought for the price of a goat.”

The experts, meanwhile, also recommend an international conference on illicit arms trade to bring the issue out into the open. The panel also urges the United Nations to initiate a study on a reliable system of marking all such weapons at the point of manufacture to make it easier to track down their origins.

Goldring says that the existing U.N. arms register should be expanded to include small arms. “We think the register should include the range of weapons being used in conflicts around the world today. But there just isn’t a lot of support for expansion.”

Goldring also says that some governments say that including too much information would weaken the register; other governments say that including light weapons would make the register extraordinarily difficult to administer.

The register currently records the import and export of only seven major categories of arms: battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles and missile launchers.

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