Michael Fallon: criticising Saudi Arabia 'not helpful' for UK arms sales
Defence secretary provokes backlash from human rights groups for emphasising sale of fighter jets to the kingdom
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Ewen MacAskill and
Jessica Elgot
Wednesday 25 October 2017 18.59 BSTFirst published on Wednesday 25 October 2017 18.54 BST
Michael Fallon urged MPs to stop criticising Saudi Arabia in the interests of securing a fighter jet deal, provoking sharp criticism from human rights and arms trade campaigners.
The defence secretary was giving evidence to the Commons defence committee, where he was pressed about why a deal to sell Typhoon fighter jets to
Saudi Arabia had not yet been signed.
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Fallon said he had been working extremely hard on the deal and had travelled to Jeddah in September to discuss it with his Saudi counterpart. Although
Qatar had agreed two days earlier to buy 24 jets from the UK, Fallon had to settle for signing a largely meaningless joint defence agreement with the Saudis.
Fallon told the defence committee: “I have to repeat, sadly, to this committee that obviously other criticism of Saudi Arabia in this parliament is not helpful and ... I’ll leave it there,” he said. “But we need to do everything possible to encourage Saudi Arabia towards batch two. I believe they will commit to batch two.”
MPs have been outspoken in criticising Saudi Arabia over its intensive bombing campaign of
Yemen which has resulted in heavy civilian casualties. Andrew Smith, spokesperson for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, said: “These comments from the secretary of state for defence are disgraceful. He is calling on other parliamentarians to join him in putting arms sales ahead of human rights, democracy and international humanitarian law.”
He added that Saudi Arabia has inflicted a terrible humanitarian catastrophe on Yemen. “Fallon should be doing all he can to stop the bloodshed and end UK complicity in the suffering, not urging his colleagues to willingly ignore the abuses in order to sell even more weapons.”
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