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OK I dug out a CAAT leaflet on British Aerospace from 1995 and found out the following 1) between 1989 and 1993 there has been a drop in the arms trade of over 40%. British arms exports dropped by over 60%. 2) International Studies Group at Plymouth University: "Continued reductions in the global arms market and question marks ove the long term prospects for future Saudi orders, coupled with the emergence of new rivals in the third world and increasingly aggressive copetition from current ones, all place question marks over the defence industry's ability to sustain both current levels of exports and its share of the arms trade" 3) (not CAAT info) I went to the BAe careers presentation and they placed great stress on the competition, on the fact that they had nearly gone bust and on the importance of the Al Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia 4) Al Yamamah works thusly- they sell oil to GB oil companies, and the revenue raised by these companies from the oil goes to BAe, hence any drop in oil prices has drastic results. 5) (1995 info) annual domestic borrowing by Saudi Arabia has gone from £0 to £56 billion from 1989-1995. In 1994 the govt cut state spending by 19%. 6) SA had to renegociate arms paymenst with the USA and Rifkind flew out to try and maintain Al Yamamah in 1994. Also in 1994 NCM credit insurance and Coface (french export credit agency) tightened terms for Saudi credit. 7) BAe still sells arms to SA -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To be removed/added, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk, NOT the whole list. Archived at http://linux.clare.cam.ac.uk/~saw27/casi/discuss.html