APPENDIX 15
Letter from the Minister of State, Foreign
and Commonwealth Office to the Chairman on Arms Export Licensing
to Pakistan
In view of your interest in the matter of export
licences to Pakistan, I thought I should write to let you know
that the Government has now reached decisions on a number of export
licence applications for Pakistan.
As you know, processing of applications was
prolonged due to our concerns about the situation following the
coup last October. In your Committees' report of 11 February,
you agreed that the Government had been right to take a cautious
approach on this matter, As we discussed during my Evidence session
on 4 May, the situation in Pakistan remains fluid but we now feel
that we are better able to assess the intentions of the Musharraf
regime and hence make decisions on a number of export licence
applications.
As I said to you during my Evidence session,
we remain concerned about defence exports to Pakistan, in the
light of last year's incursion at the Kargil sector of the Line
of Control in Kashmir, the military coup, the possibility of diversion
to undesirable end-users and continued regional tensions. The
individual applications have been carefully assessed against the
national criteria and those in the EU Code of Conduct. As a result
we have refused 26 Standard Individual Export Licence applications.
However, we judge that a number of licence applications for Pakistan
do not contravene the criteria and we have therefore issued 20
Standard Individual Export Licences, including for spare parts
for the Pakistani Navy (Committee Members had asked about supplies
for the Navy during my Evidence session). We have also refused
Pakistan as a permitted destination on one Open Individual Export
Licence and approved its inclusion on one other such licence.
We hope to process the remaining pending applications as soon
as possible.
Details of the above decisions will be published
in the Annual Report on Strategic Export Controls for the year
2000. As you know, the Government is considering the format and
content of future Annual Reports in the light of the Committees'
report of 2 February, to which we will respond shortly. I would
not wish to pre-empt next year's Annual Report, or the official
response to the Committees' report, by making public specific
details of these decisions. I would however assure you that the
licences which we have decided to issue cover a narrow and well-defined
range of equipment such as naval spares, bomb disposal equipment
and goods for civilian end-users, the export of which will not
in any way contravene our national criteria or those in the EU
Code of Conduct. Most UK defence exports business with Pakistan
is small-scale. We have not received applications for major weapons
and weapons systems such as airplanes, tanks, or ships.
Our policy on export licence applications for
Pakistan remains case by case consideration. We will continue
to keep the situation in Pakistan under close scrutiny.
5 July 2000
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