Source: http://worldcityweb.com/home/MIA/publications/magazine/19/706/

Disarming Latin America

by Marcela Sanchez

The U.S. Congress will soon havean opportunity to reduce the prevention of arms in Latin America and, in the process, make its mostsignificant contribution to security in the hemisphere in years.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar, who helped write the 1991 law that has since deactivated more than 6,500 nuclear warheads from the Soviet arsenal, is turning his attention to stockpiles of conventional weapons around the world. Lugar is sponsoring legislation known as the Conventional Arms Threat Reduction Act (CATRA) that would establish a separate State Department office with funding "commensurate with the risk posed by these weapons’’ to lead "an accelerated global effort’’ to eliminate them.

It couldn’t be timelier for Latin America. Nowhere else are these weapons more lethal than in Latin America and the Caribbean. The number of firearm homicides in the region is "five times higher than the world average,’’ according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey project. In the region, between 73,000 and 90,000 people are killed by firearms every year, including those in Colombia’s internal conflict.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s latest oil-financed shopping spree makes CATRA even more urgent. The enigmatic president purchased 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and other military equipment from the Russian government. The transaction was perfectly legal and Venezuelan officials promised that those weapons would be delivered only to Venezuelan armed forces.

But in a country with an army of 34,000 and a national guard of 23,000, the question is what will happen with the other 40,000- plus Russian rifles and the weapons they will replace. Chavez says he is planning to arm citizens to resist an eventual U.S. invasion. Others fear the weapons will find their way into the hands of Colombian rebel groups. Chavez attempted to placate such concerns this week by telling Colombian President Alvaro Uribe that he does not support "any terrorist act whatsoever.’’ But Chavez is ambiguous about which Colombian irregular groups he considers terrorists.

Arms experts agree whenever there is a surplus of weapons, the potential for some to fall into the wrong hands is very high. The risk is even greater when such "leakage’’ already exists. According to Matthew Schroeder, small-arms control expert at the Washington-based Federation of American Scientists, there is "strong evidence’’ that Venezuelan army weapons have ended up with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC.

Crossing the porous Venezuela-Colombia border would be one of the shortest routes for small arms among the many passages taken by similar weapons in recent years. In 1999, 10,000 rifles from Jordan were airdropped into the Colombian jungle in a deal allegedly mediated for the FARC by former Peruvian intelligence chief Vladimiro Montesinos.

In 2001, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC, hired an Israeli arms dealer based in Panama to purchase 3,000 rifles from the Nicaraguan army and stashed them on a ship purportedly transporting plastic balls from Mexico to Colombia. And just over the last few months, several arms dealers have been arrested or indicted in Florida for conspiring to export rifles and ammunition from the United States to both the FARC and the AUC.

After the Venezuelan purchase, U.S. officials said they were "extremely troubled’’ by the possibility the arms could be diverted to organizations other than the Venezuelan military. As expected, Venezuelan government officials denounced Washington’s "impertinence’’ for intruding in internal affairs, but considering this was one of the largest small-arms sales to the region since the Cold War and to one of the most unsettling leaders in the region in years it was the least Washington could do.

Destruction is a critical component of arms reduction and CATRA is designed to eliminate surplus and unguarded stocks of weapons currently awaiting the highest bidder. But destruction alone is not enough.

Back in 1997, President Clinton signed the first-ever regional international agreement "to shut down the gray and black arms markets.’’ The OAS Firearms Convention, as the treaty is known, has had some effect in strengthening export controls, marking firearms and sharing information that can lead to the arrests of black market arms dealers. Yet, it is clear that the markets remain open for business.

Unfortunately, the United States has yet to ratify the treaty and there is no sign that it will do it any time soon. But at least now, thanks to CATRA, it has another opportunity to throw its weight in favor of nonproliferation and a less violent hemisphere.