http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200512130553.html EA MPs Urged to Take Lead in Fight Against Small Arms The East African (Nairobi) NEWS December 13, 2005 Posted to the web December 13, 2005 By Allan Buluku Nairobi Lack of political will is preventing the implementation of the Nairobi protocol on the control and reduction of small arms and light weapons in the region, participants at a regional workshop on small arms said last week. Speakers at the workshop in Mombasa, Kenya, challenged legislators in the region to take a leading role in the fight against the spread of illegally held arms. Kenyan MP Joseph Nkaissery said that other than harmonising laws, parliaments in the region should seek ways of keeping arms dealers out of East Africa. "It is crucial that we stop Western arm dealers from continuing with their illegal sale of firearms in Africa. We can only do this by legislation because we will also need the support of our European parliamentary colleagues to check the flow of arms from manufactures in their countries," Mr Nkaissery told the conference attended by MPs from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Mr Nkaissery, who is also a member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations in Kenya, said it was imperative that countries in the region have a co-ordinated approach to the fight against light weapons. The workshop discussed the harmonisation of laws on small arms and light weapons within East Africa in order to hasten the adoption of the Nairobi Protocol by regional parliaments. The protocol was signed on April 21 last year, but it is yet to be implemented fully. Norbert Mao, a Ugandan MP, said that in most cases, people resort to war after all civilian methods of solving disputes have failed. Leaders in most countries, he added, have been totalitarian in their rule, leading to armed rebellion. "These are the same leaders who fail to provide the political will in implementing joint protocols to fight the problem of arms," he said. Citing a case in which a number of UK nationals, mercenaries on their way to pull off a coup in Equitorial Guinea, were arrested in Zimbabwe with a cache of firearms and charged with treason, he said that lack of strong laws had led to increased flow of firearms. "These Western arms dealers are 'conflict entrepreneurs' who should be banned from Africa. They relax in comfort in Europe while fuelling conflict in the region. They have even made it cheaper for politicians to buy weapons than put up political campaigns to contest for public office," Mr Mao said. Another Ugandan MP, Kassiano Wadri Ezati of Terego County, said that East African countries should also improve budgetary allocation to various armed forces such as the police to make them more effective in dealing with illegal arms dealers. The chairman of the Tanzanian chapter of the Amani Forum, Ibrahim Wankanga Marwa, said that MPs in the region should enhance collaboration with administrative organs and strengthen the legislation on movement of arms. A Rwandan MP, Sam Kaka Kanyemera, said that problems related to illegal weapons in his country had considerably reduced over the past five years He said that, after the 1994 genocide, an aggressive disarmament programme helped to mop up thousands of illegal weapons in the country.