Is Czech arms export becoming more transparent?
Although Czechs have never been too eager to go to war, arms production has played an important role in the Czech economy. The Czechoslovak army before the Second World War was one of the best equipped in Europe, in the face of a feared German invasion. After the war, communist Czechoslovakia continued in the tradition of massive armament production. Czechoslovak weapons were used in a number of conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The infamous Czech-made explosive Semtex was used in several terrorist attacks. Arms production continued after the fall of communism in 1989. The Czech Republic still exports arms to about 100 countries every year. The main products are firearms, anti-chemical weapon systems, ammunition, aircraft technology and radio locators. But how justifiable is the arms trade today? Can current legislation guarantee that the arms trade will not be abused?
Filip Pospisil has been campaigning for better transparency in this field for several years. As he says, apart from exporting arms to allied countries, arms deliveries to non-stable regions have not been an exception during last decade.
"The Czech Republic exported for instance to Zimbabwe just shortly before it was put on the list of countries which were subject of the European Union embargo. The Czech Republic also exported large quantities of weapons to Sri Lanka and to Yemen. There were reported cases of diverted deliveries of arms from Yemen to other countries - like Sudan - that were under international embargos, and there are many more. Latin American countries are destination of export of Czech small arms. Small arms are considered a very destabilizing factor in this area."
There are different international regulations on arms trade. The Czech Republic is also bound to respect certain rules as a member of the United Nations and the European Union. But most of these regulations do not include the threat of sanctions and can easily be violated. According Filip Pospisil the Czech Republic needs above all good quality national legislation.
To make the process more transparent three non governmental organizations have joined and established a Working Group for Arms Trade Control. Last week they organized a public seminar to open debate about parliamentary control of the arms trade. Barbora Pechotova from Transparency International.
"Our idea is that parliamentary control could bring more transparency into the arms trade. But at the same time we have to be really careful that people do not say that public control is not important anymore. So we have to push through both kinds of control: parliamentary, executive as well as public."
Tony Colman who is a member of the British Parliament for the ruling Labour Party also took part in the debate. He said that the British parliament is interested in the situation about arms control in other countries.
"Well the UK Parliament is extremely interested. Not from the point of view saying: 'We've done it better'. In fact it's only been the last seven years we've had parliamentary oversight, and clearly, previous governments in the UK have exported armaments to extremely dubious regimes all around the world. I think we are all learning together that if there is a need to have an international arms trade, that it must be conducted on ethical bases. Part of the ethics is to have the transparency of reporting to the public but secondly the decisions of government must have as early as possible the oversight a commentary from elected parliament."
Here in the Czech Republic the defence spokesman of the right-wing opposition Civic Democrats, Petr Necas, believes that the system of control has improved in last years but there are still changes in the legislation to be made.
"We've been going through two steps licence system. We've got a special licence authority within the Ministry of Trade and Industry. I would say that our legal framework is fully in conformity with the legal framework of the EU but I think it will be necessary to make some changes which would create much more transparent system."
What kind of changes do you mean in particular?
"I think it would be good to make some legislative changes, for example we would like to draft a creation of a special parliamentary body which would deal with arms export control. And of course, it will be necessary to make some changes vis a vis so called arms re-export. So we would like to deal with this issue during next several months within the lower house of the Czech Parliament."
Barbora Pechotova confirms that now there is more political will to improve the legal procedures which provide better transparency in this field.
"I think it's not only the legal procedures. I think it's the system is becoming more transparent. For example we know that the annual report for 2003 will be much better than the one for 2000. We also see improvement in communication of ministries and NGOs. So these two examples could show that the situation is slowly changing."
The Czechoslovak economy used to depend on the arms industry for many decades. Although it went trough an essential conversion in the 1990's, profit remained its main target. Now it seems that after fifteen years of democracy in the Czech Republic ethical issues are finally on the agenda.
