Governments have a legal obligation to ensure effective control over arms exports and to monitor and supervise the movement of arms to ensure that they do not fall into unauthorized hands. The purpose of this book is to provide a detailed picture of how governments discharge this responsibility. Individual chapters describe national efforts to control arms transfers, concentrating on the legal framework that exists to regulate arms exports. The book includes a discussion of existing multilateral arms transfer control regimes, including the United Nations, the Co-ordinating Committee for East-West Trade Policy (CoCom), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and arms embargoes agreed by the Council of Ministers of the European Community. Every effort has been made to produce a comprehensive compendium, but total success has been prevented by the continued failure of some governments to release adequate information into the public domain.
