The arms trade has expanded by more than 20 percent worldwide in the past five years, with the Middle East and Asian countries accounting for most of the increase, figures released yesterday by the authoritative Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) showed.
The US was by far the largest arms supplier, accounting for 31 percent of global weapons exports over the past five years, with over a third going to the Middle East. The US also supplied 40 percent of Pakistan’s major conventional weapons systems.
The five biggest suppliers of conventional arms were the US, Russia, Germany, France and the UK. China was the biggest recipient, followed by India, though China has recently cut its imports dramatically as it builds up its own arms industry, SIPRI said.
Arms sales to Middle Eastern countries rose by 38 percent, with their purchases including more than 200 US combat aircraft and more than 5,000 guided bombs. Britain’s biggest markets for its arms were the US and India, which is receiving 66 Hawk-100 trainer aircraft and 20 Jaguar-S fighter aircraft from the UK. Delivery of 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia is scheduled to begin this year, SIPRI said.
UK government figures show that in the last quarter of last year, £1.4 million (US$2 million) in arms exports to Sri Lanka, mainly components for communications equipment, were approved. This compares with less than £1 million of UK arms exports to the country for the whole of 2007.
“When the world needs co-operative solutions to global problems, the thriving international arms market points to a squandering of resources which the international community can ill afford,” said Paul Holtom, head of SIPRI’s arms transfer program.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘PLAINLY ERRONEOUS’: The justice department appealed a Trump-appointed judge’s blocking of the release of a report into election interference by the incoming president US Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the federal cases against US president-elect Donald Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents, has resigned after submitting his investigative report on Trump, an expected move that came amid legal wrangling over how much of that document can be made public in the days ahead. The US Department of Justice disclosed Smith’s departure in a footnote of a court filing on Saturday, saying he had resigned one day earlier. The resignation, 10 days before Trump is inaugurated, follows the conclusion of two unsuccessful criminal prosecutions
RSS