25 August 2006

U.S. Gives $50,000 for Central America Small Arms Destruction

Focus is to stop illicit trafficking of automatic weapons, ammunition

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The United States is providing $50,000 to the Organization of American States (OAS) for a newly created special fund to help countries in Central America manage, collect and destroy stockpiles of small arms and light weapons, meaning such items as handguns, automatic weapons and ammunition.

The contribution from the U.S. Mission to the OAS -- the first to the special fund -- will be used to help finance a new Central America Munitions Stockpile Destruction Pilot Project.  That project, focusing in its initial stage on Nicaragua and Honduras, is being carried out by the OAS in addition to the organization's work in destroying anti-personnel land mines in Latin America.

An official with the U.S. mission said the contribution, announced by the OAS August 24, is focused on stopping illicit trafficking in small arms in Central America.  The official said the United States views its $50,000 contribution as "seed money" to encourage other nations, especially those in Europe, to help with financing the project.

OAS's Christopher Hernández-Roy said in an August 25 interview with the Washington File that Italy has provided funding for the project, while Germany is "lining up" money for the same purpose.

Hernández-Roy, head of the OAS Department of Public Security, which is carrying out the pilot project, said small arms and light weapons can make tempting targets for use by criminals and terrorists. The presence of stores of conventional ammunition and explosives also can be a hazard to surrounding communities, he said.

The OAS wanted to highlight the U.S. $50,000 donation, said Hernández-Roy, because it represented the first contribution to the special fund, and because the OAS now is focusing on eliminating small arms and light weapons, in addition to its ongoing work in destroying land mines.

The project is needed, said Hernández-Roy, because such Central American countries as Nicaragua "have more arms and ammunition [left over from the country's civil war in the 1980s] than they can possibly hope to use for any legitimate military reasons."  The weapons, he continued, “need to be stored and secured to prevent loss, diversion, or theft to criminals, or possibly to terrorists."

The OAS said in describing its pilot project that Nicaragua has indicated that it has about 333 tons of artillery ammunition and some 100 tons and 79 tons, respectively, of small arms and air defense ammunition to be destroyed.  Meanwhile, Honduras has sought assistance with the cleanup of a storage site in the Naco Valley region of Honduras after the facility exploded accidentally in 1993.  Similarly, a smaller accident at a storage facility in Guatemala in 2005 raised concern by the Guatemalan government about the need to eliminate potentially dangerous surplus munitions in that nation.

Hernández-Roy said the call for a special fund to eliminate small arms was spelled out in a resolution adopted at the 2005 OAS General Assembly meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.  That resolution said the fund would "collect and channel financial resources" to the organization's member states "for small arms collection, destruction, and related training programs.”

The State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement (WRA) says the “proliferation of illicit small arms and light weapons in regions of the world suffering from political instability and violent conflict has proven a major obstacle to peace, economic development, and efforts to rebuild war-torn societies.”

The WRA office added that the United States is a “global leader in efforts to mitigate the illicit trafficking and destabilizing accumulation of small arms and light weapons through multilateral diplomacy and bilateral assistance to countries in need.”

Text of the 2005 OAS resolution is available on the State Department Web site.

More about U.S. policy on Small Arms/Light Weapons & Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) on the State Department’s Web site.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)