U.N. arms embargoes can be potent symbol: study

By Claudia Parsons

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. arms embargoes are always breached and rarely change the behavior of the targeted country but can be a powerful symbolic tool, a report published on Monday found.

The report by Swedish researchers examined the 27 mandatory U.N. arms embargoes implemented since 1990 on states such as Iraq and Somalia, and groups including al Qaeda.

"Of all the 27 cases ... none has completely stopped the transfer of weapons to the target," said Siemon Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute who wrote the report with Peter Wallensteen, professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"Always there will be breaches. Does that make arms embargoes useless? No, it doesn't," Wezeman said.

Embargoes were more effective if U.N. peacekeepers were present, preferably with a mandate to enforce the embargo, and if neighboring states cooperated by imposing tight border controls, he said.

Above all, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- as well as the rest of the international community needed to demonstrate political will both to pass the embargo and enforce it strongly once it was in place.

Wezeman contrasted the arms embargo on Iraq after the first Gulf War in 1991, when strong U.S.-led enforcement succeeded in choking most arms supplies to Baghdad, with some West African countries under embargo where "there isn't really anybody who cares about it," so arms flows continue unchecked.

The report looked separately at whether countries targeted by embargoes changed their behavior to comply with Security Council demands and found that usually they did not.