Chinese arms in Darfur the twisted trail of weapons

KHARTOUM, June 19 (Reuters) In a rebel camp along the barren, windswept border between Sudan and Chad, dozens of trucks packed with dreadlocked fighters manning heavy machine guns are lined up.

Piled up behind them are ammunition boxes, covered in Chinese symbols -- it's impossible to know exactly where the bullets in the boxes came from but they offer a glimpse of the complex and circuitous routes of the global arms trade.

United Nations investigators have found most of the small arms fuelling the conflict in Sudan's western Darfur are Chinese, despite an arms ban on a region where tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million squat in squalid camps.

''China has been, and continues to be, a major supplier of light weapons to the government of Sudan and many of the neighbouring states,'' said Ernst Jan Hogendoorn, one of four UN experts on an panel which recommended 17 players in the Darfur conflict be sanctioned for obstructing peace.

The panel's report found Sudan's neighbours Chad, Libya and Eritrea had supplied weapons to Darfur and that most of the small arms and ammunition in the region were Chinese.

''Chinese arms and ammunition are relatively cheap compared to other suppliers -- some also argue that China asks fewer questions,'' said Hogendoorn.

However, he said they found no evidence China was defying the embargo and supplying arms directly to Darfur. But weapons they had sold to Khartoum were likely to end up there.

China says it takes a responsible attitude towards military exports, rejecting accusations in an Amnesty International report this month that it was selling arms to an array of human rights abusers, including Sudan and Myanmar.

''CAUTIOUS AND RESPONSIBLE'' Amnesty said China had provided hundreds of military trucks to Sudan in 2004 -- the height of the 3-year-old Darfur conflict. The rights group said the Sudanese army and its allied Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, had used such trucks for travel and they had even transported people for execution.

The Janjaweed have killed, tortured and raped non-Arab civilians across Darfur and even into neighbouring Chad. Darfur rebels also stand accused of human rights abuses in a conflict the United States has described as genocide.

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