Wednesday 23 February 2011

Cameron defends arms sales to Arab states

David Cameron has reacted  angrily to mounting criticism over his arms export mission to the Middle East declaring that Britain has "nothing to be ashamed of for selling weapons to Arab leaders":

‘We have probably the toughest set of export rules probably anywhere in the world. It is obviously difficult to get it right on every occasion.’
An angry Mr Cameron told a journalist: ‘I simply don’t understand how you can’t understand that democracies have a right to defend themselves.

It would be interesting to hear Cameron´s definition of a democracy.

Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate, notes one case where Cameron definitely did not "get it right":

Britain sold Libya more than $6 million in ammunition including riot-control ammo, in the third quarter of 2010 alone—a chapter in shame that Prime Minister David Cameron (who recently flew to Egypt to strike a relationship with the nascent regime there) might wish to rectify.

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