Belgium ready to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia

Activists come together together to condemn exporting arms to Saudi Arabia on 9 September 2017 [Alisdare Hickson/Flickr]

Belgian authorities said on Saturday that they are ready to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia if it is proven that they have been used in conflicts with other countries, Al-Khaleej Online reported.

Foreign Minister Didier Reynders was reported telling the local RTBF television channel that he thinks it would be good to suspend arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia if it were proven that they had been used “in an ongoing conflict, such as in Yemen.”

If this was approved, he stressed, the regional Walloon Government “must” take that action.

If the arms were found to be used outside of Saudi Arabia, he continued, sales licenses could be suspended.

Reuters reported a diplomatic source saying banning arms sales would be on the agenda of the meeting of the EU foreign ministers today.

READ: Saudi vessel leaves France without arms

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.