BERLIN (Reuters) - German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel has vowed a much more cautious approach to licensing arms exports, unnerving the sizeable defence industry and signalling a change in policy from the previous coalition government under which sales rose.
German arms exports have come under scrutiny in recent years because of the increasing sums involved and because a greater number of arms are heading to non-European Union or NATO partners, and potentially unstable regions.
"Exporting weapons is no way of making economic policy ... but this view appeared to change in the last years," Gabriel said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.
"If you make the wrong decision you very quickly find yourself doing business in death. I can't undo decisions of past years ... but I can say that for all decisions I'm responsible for Germany will show much more caution. Germany has to have restrictive controls over its arms exports."
In the first four months of this year, Germany authorised arms exports worth 1.2 billion euros ($1.6 billion), a slight fall on the previous year, according to the Economy Ministry.
The number of German arms exports for that period to non-EU or non-NATO countries rose by 130 million euros ($178 million) to 650 million euros.
Exports worth 97 million euros were sent to Brunei, 31 million euros to Saudi Arabia and 29 million euros to Algeria.
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That's a lot of money for these so-called 3rd World countries to spend on arms while the majority of their population lives in abject poverty.
