Free Republic

U.S. Sen. John McCain said Friday in Vietnam that it’s time for the United States to ease the ban on selling lethal arms to the communist country, saying it has progressed on human rights. McCain told reporters in Hanoi that the easing should happen gradually, but he hoped it could begin as early as next month. “It should be limited at first to those defensive capabilities such as coast guard and maritime systems that are purely for external security,” he said.

UN arms embargoes are systematically violated and need to be made tougher if they are to end conflict and curb human rights abuses, campaigners say. Each of the 13 UN embargoes imposed in the past decade has been breached, the Control Arms Campaign has found. The group, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, says unscrupulous arms dealers are "making a mockery" of UN attempts to tackle global conflict. It is calling for states to agree an arms trade treaty. It says such a treaty would enable governments to act more effectively to prevent arms falling into the wrong hands. Currently, although...

AP, STRASBOURG Friday, Mar 11, 2005 Non-governmental organizations and European Parliament legislators urged EU member states on Wednesday not lift the arms embargo against China. The ban on weapons sales was imposed after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing in 1989, but there's a discussion within the EU about whether to end it. The lifting of the embargo would severely undermine the EU's human rights policies, said Dick Oosting, director of the European branch of Amnesty International. "The number of human rights activists arrested in China is rising and the concessions we're getting are minimal," Oosting told a seminar on the...