Conclusions
26. It may be argued that little harm has been
done by this confused episode. The Zimbabwe Air Force has in the
end received only a few thousand pounds worth of spares for its
Hawk aircraft, under an OIEL dating back to 1998, and under two
of the seven licences given in February 2000 and revoked three
months later. Our examination has however highlighted two matters
of wider concern.
27. The lack of transparency: had it not been
for the very well-informed leak in the newspapers of 20 January
2000, and the public announcement in May 2000 of an embargo, it
is unlikely that the question would ever have come to Parliament's
attention. The earliest normal opportunity for it to do so would
have been as a result of detailed examination by a select committee
of the Annual Report for 2000. On past experience, publication
of this Report cannot be expected before the summer of 2001. Not
until the end of 2001 would the issue have become known. The
case for some " real-time" prior scrutiny of licensing
of arms exports is significantly reinforced by our examination
of the Zimbabwe licences.
28. The problem with OIELs: we are concerned
at the extent to which a policy of stricter or tougher examination
of licence applications is in practice undermined by the unfettered
and unmonitored use of existing Open Individual Export Licences.
For all the period during which Government examined the question
of the Hawk spares licences, Hawk spares could have been freely
delivered to Zimbabwe under Open Licences given in recent years
to several companies. We recommend that the Government re-examine
the system for inter-departmental scrutiny of applications for
OIELs for sensitive destinations, to ensure that Ministers are
fully aware of the significance of existing licences when examining
applications for new licences.
29. In August 1998 the armed forces of Zimbabwe
intervened in the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. The UK Government seems to have operated thereafter a tighter
policy on licensing the export of arms which might be used in
the conflict, but without the clarity of a formal embargo or even
a public policy statement. After the breakdown of negotiations
between the parties in mid-1999, the Government, together with
the Dutch Government, took the initiative in sponsoring an EU
Declaration calling for rigorous enforcement of the terms of the
EU Code of Conduct. Following a newspaper leak of internal discussions
on seven licence applications for Hawk spares, the Prime Minister
announced in February 2000 a tighter regime on arms exports to
Zimbabwe. Two weeks later seven licences were given for spares
for Zimbabwe's Hawk aircraft. Described by the Minister of State
in evidence to us as " a very isolated exception", this
decision both undermined the force of the June 1999 EU Resolution
which the UK had co-sponsored and seems to have constituted a
breach of the UK's national criteria on arms exports. Three months
later these and other licences were revoked as a result of the
serious deterioration in Zimbabwe's internal situation, unconnected
to the material to be supplied. We recognise the real dilemma
faced by Ministers in balancing the contractual obligations of
a company and the reputation of the UK as a supplier of defence
material against its desire to ensure that UK arms are not used
in "international aggression" or to " affect adversely
regional stability in any significant way", as the UK's arms
export criteria state. The episode reveals nonetheless a disturbing
degree of muddle and confusion arising from these conflicting
objectives.
7 
