NARRATOR: Around the world, thousands of people are killed every day by guns, grenades and landmines. Yet the international trade in small arms continues unabated, fueling wars and conflicts. What, if anything, are the governments of the world doing to stop it?

ADM EUGENE CARROLL, Jr. (USN, Ret.): The Cold War is over and Americans can feel relief that we no longer face a nuclear holocaust. For many other people around the world, however, violence is real. Tens of thousands die every month in regional conflicts and civil wars.

Our program today looks at the international traffic in small arms and the tragedy that they produce in dozens of countries around the world today. Yes, the Cold War is over, but as you will see, we still live in a very violent, over-armed world.

NARRATOR: Throughout the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union stood poised with nuclear arsenals, totaling over 50,000 weapons. As public fear grew, citizens mobilized to protest the arms race. The consequences of nuclear war would be so great that despite being bitter rivals, both sides saw the need to limit these weapons. But the fevered competition of the Cold War pushed the superpowers to spend ever-increasing amounts on big ticket weapons systems, eventually contributing to the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and the huge federal debt here at home.

Even as these costly planes, ships and missiles were being prepared for possible global nuclear war, other real conflicts were raging in which millions died. There were proxy wars, where the superpowers pumped armaments into the hands of client states and rebel groups. And there were civil and ethnic conflicts also fueled by readily available light weapons. Politicians the general public paid relatively little attention to these wars because they didn't threaten us directly as the larger confrontation between East and West.

Then, with surprising suddenness, the Cold War was over. Now the world's attention is beginning to turn to some of the 23 regional conflicts around the world, many of which have been going on for years: Somalia, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Angola, Kashmir, Liberia, East Timor, Burma, Rwanda, the list goes on and on.

As the involvement of the US military and UN peace-keeping forces has increased, so has Western media attention and, with it, greater public awareness of these widespread regional conflicts. Almost all of these war are fought primarily with small, portable weapons: assault rifles, machine guns, pistols, mortars, grenades and landmines.

STEVE GOOSE: There really is no doubt that the spread of small arms and light weapons around the world is fueling the dozens of conflicts, small wars and big wars that we see around the globe today.

NARRATOR: Steve Goose directs the Arms Project of Human Rights Watch and is a long-time analyst of the international small arms trade.

Mr. GOOSE: There are probably more weapons of this type being shipped around through more different channels, both private and governmental, than we've ever seen before. And there are probably fewer controls on this trade than we've ever seen in the past.

NARRATOR: Since World War II, an estimated 40 million people have died in armed conflict. That's over 15,000 a week. The majority of the victims have been civilians and non-combatants. Light weaponry has played a central role in almost all these conflicts. In some cases, the easy availability of firearms has fueled low level rivalries, igniting large scale bloodshed and reprisal that, once started, proves impossible to contain.

ANDREW NATSIOS: The atrocities have been absolutely horren-dous, among the worst atrocities in Africa have been committed in Sudan.

NARRATOR: Vice president of World Vision, the world's largest private relief organization, Andrew Natsios has traveled extensively throughout Africa, including the Sudan, where an estimated 1.5 million people have died in an ongoing civil war.

Mr. NATSIOS: There has been tribal conflict in Sudan for generations, long before the civil war started, but it was ritualistic in nature. They didn't have weapons systems that could kill a lot of people, so they might have a tribal skirmish between two tribes and one or two men might be killed.

What's happened now is they've introduced light arms, automatic weapons into these tribal conflicts. Instead of one or two men getting killed, 500 would get killed, whole villages would get wiped out, massacres take place that would never have taken place before the light weaponry was available.

NARRATOR: While the world was shocked by the recent slaughter in Rwanda, many people are under the impression that machetes and spears were involved in most of the killing. But a study by the Human Rights Watch Arms Project reported $12 million in small arms sales to the Rwandan government from France, Egypt and South Africa just prior to the outbreak of war.

Mr. GOOSE: It was the availability of automatic rifles and the widespread availability of hand grenades and other small arms that allowed this atrocity to take place on such a scale. One example: There was a church center in Rwanda where nearly 3000 people had gone for shelter. Hutu forces came and using machetes, but also using automatic rifles, and grenades, and machine guns, managed to slaughter all 3000 people in a matter of four hours.

NARRATOR: Because efforts have not focussed on disarming members of the former Rwandan army, many observers feel that the fighting could erupt again.

KATHI AUSTIN: On the border of Rwanda, in eastern Zaire, right now what you have is a militarized state in exile.

NARRATOR: Kathi Austin, of the Institute for Policy Studies, recently returned from a ten-week fact-finding mission in central Africa.

Ms. AUSTIN: There is tremendous insecurity in the refugee camps in Zaire. This insecurity is a recipe for disaster in the future. You have armed military elements who are preparing to go back to war.

NARRATOR: One particular type of light weapon -- the anti-personnel landmine -- causes indiscriminate violence among non-combatants.

UNITED NATIONS Representative: Egyptian, Belgian, British, Pakistani, Russian, American and a Czechoslovakian. These two here are the ones that are causing the major problems with children, etc. There is literally thousands of them laid. This one, they usually say it looks like a vacuum glass top. Children pick it up and all they got to do is just -- (sound of explosion) -- and that would go off and it would detonate.

NARRATOR: The UN estimates over 100 million landmines are scattered worldwide and new ones continue to be placed. Remaining hidden long after the soldiers have left, landmines kill or maim an estimated 15,000 innocent people a year, disrupt farming and impede resettlement after the war. Among the most heavily mined countries are Cambodia, Afghanistan and Angola, but 62 countries have reported mine problems.

Mr. NATSIOS: I think there's something on the order of 18 million landmines in Angola. There are whole cities that have miles' worth of landmines around them to prevent the people from leaving or anybody from going in.

NARRATOR: Because of their indiscriminate nature, there is a growing international effort to impose an outright ban on anti-personnel landmines. While the Clinton administration has endorsed this as an ultimate goal, its current policy stops short of an outright ban, emphasizing a shift to a certain type of landmine, those with a "self-destruct" mechanism.

CALEB ROSSITER: The Clinton administration has created a disaster out of success on the landmines front.

NARRATOR: Caleb Rossiter directs the Project on Demilitari-zation and Democracy and is an authority on arms sales.

Mr. ROSSITER: What they proposed is to export and promote and encourage countries to use a certain class of landmines called the self-destruct landmines that we make and everybody could then buy. And then maybe five years from now we'll start talking how to get rid of this final class of landmines which we think are safer, the United States thinks is safer. We are just starting to make progress on the notion that hidden weapons are coward's weapons, should be illegal, and now the administration wants us to use "safe" hidden weapons.

NARRATOR: Beyond the body count, the trade in small arms damages societies in a variety of other ways.

Mr. ROSSITER: In about half the developing world, countries spend more on their armed forces than on health and education combined. Obviously, you can't take off as an economy if you're putting that kind of money into an unproductive sector of the economy, the armed forces.

Mr. GOOSE: In the case of Rwanda, they ended up mortgaging their tea harvests in order to finance these sales. In much the same light, we have information that the government of Angola has mortgaged their next seven years of oil production in order to finance their purchases of weaponry. And some believe that they only have about 15 years of oil production left. So, you're trading in the future of your country in order to buy the weapons to fight the wars today.

NARRATOR: The intrusion of war has forced millions to flee their homelands, creating a worldwide refugee crisis. Over the last two decades, the number of refugees has increased tenfold, from 2.5 million in the mid-70s to an estimated 25 million refugees today.

REFUGEE in LIBERIA: (Translated.) I want to go home, but now there's no law and order in our country, so I cannot guarantee my safety in my house.

NARRATOR: Even though there is no war in Zaire, Kathi Austin observed how the spillover effect from the neighboring Rwandan conflict has served to militarize the region.

Ms. AUSTIN: There were little small children, six to eight years old, who are manning these so-called roadblocks, and they were demanding payment, demanding money before they would remove the stones or the branches. When you confronted the children, you would find that they would have AK-47s at their disposal, so you kindly paid the children and went on. But that's the way you could see the perpetuation of this militarized state in places like Zaire, which are completely chaotic and where guns are readily available.

NARRATOR: In many countries wracked by years of civil strife, a "culture of violence" evolves in which young men, deprived of the opportunity to learn a productive trade, learn instead to survive as part of a marauding militia. As a result, whole societies can collapse into anarchy.

Mr. NATSIOS: In Somalia during the conflict, for example, the civil war and the chaos that took place, one of the clan groups, in order to make more money to buy more weapons with, actually dug up all of the water piping in Mogadishu and sold the water piping off and actually loaded it on to a ship for another country. They took down all the electrical wires, rolled it all up and sold the electrical wire for scrap metal. So, there's no -- literally no infrastructure left in some of these countries because of these wars.

INTERVIEWER: Because they've traded it for arms.

Mr. NATSIOS: Exactly.

NARRATOR: One of the greatest problems in attempting to limit the transfer of small arms is the large number of producers and distributors around the world. And once produced, the weapons have an extended life cycle, often being traded from conflict to conflict.

Throughout the Cold War, both the Americans and the Soviets supplied vast arsenals of light and medium weapons to friendly governments and rebel groups in hopes of winning influence.

MICHAEL KLARE: The United States, for instance, supplied two or three billion dollars' worth of weapons to the Afghan mujiheddin.

NARRATOR: Michael Klare, the noted director of the Peace and World Security Studies program at Hampshire College, has written about the global weapons trade in "American Arms Supermarket,"

Mr. KLARE: Many of those weapons were never used in the struggle against the Soviets and are now fueling conflicts all over the world as the mujiheddin sell them on the black markets and they're just winding up everywhere.

NARRATOR: In addition, the end of the Cold War has left huge stockpiles of small arms in the hands of the former Soviet republics and their Eastern European allies. These weapons are finding their way onto the world market in a variety of ways.

VIRGINIA EZELL: There were stories of soldiers going door to door trying to sell weapons in order to get a bottle of vodka.

NARRATOR: Virginia Ezell directs the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security and is an expert on the light weapons industry.

Ms. EZELL: There's a surplus in the sense of small arms that are coming out of and circulating within the former Soviet Union because the production facilities there have continued to manufacture and their militaries have become smaller. At the same time, each of the countries that was a part of the East Bloc has been viewing their small arms industry as a way to make money.

NARRATOR: Because there's so little hard data available about the global small arms trade, it's difficult to determine who the top manufacturers and distributors are. But we do know that in addition to the major industrial powers, which once dominated the field, about two dozen other countries have become significant small arms manufacturers over the last 20 years. Low cost guns are now manufactured in places as diverse as China, South Africa, Egypt, North and South Korea, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, India, Pakistan and Singapore.

Manufacturers in the United States and Western Europe also continue to produce firearms of increasing accuracy and lethality for both military and civilian sales. Companies such as Calico of California market their 100-round assault weapon for both paramilitary use and "family shooting fun."

Ms. EZELL: I think that small arms manufacturers view them-selves as a part of the national defense system and, therefore, they don't view what they're doing as evil, they don't see themselves as merchants of death.

NARRATOR: In an increasingly competitive global market, most small arms manufacturers are willing to overlook the consequences of their products in order to make a sale, often selling guns to undemocratic regimes or into areas already collapsing into conflict.

Mr. KLARE: In many cases, American weapons have been sold to governments that have a terrible record on human rights and where the internal security forces, armed by the United States, have suppressed legitimate democratic movements.

NARRATOR: When conflict breaks out in these countries, US troops may be called on to intervene. They may find themselves confronted by weapons provided by their very own government.

America's permissive attitude toward the international small arms trade is mirrored by a lack of regulation of the gun trade here at home. Even as we claim to be fighting a "war on drugs," we make it easy for foreign drug lords to buy weapons with which to ply their trade.

Mr. KLARE: One of the things that's come out of the inves-tigation of the narco-terrorists in Colombia is that many of the weapons that they have in their possession were bought in the United States from regular gun dealers.

NARRATOR: Many planes that have brought drugs into the United States return south loaded with guns purchased over the counter here. While the 1994 Crime Bill banned 19 types of assault weapons, millions of these military-style guns are already in the country. And firearms manufacturers have already learned how to get around the law by making minor cosmetic changes to a weapon, renaming it a "sporting model," and then reintroducing it on the market.

SPOKESPERSON, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (demonstrating assault weapon not covered by ban): We start with the thing as a semi-automatic firearm with a detachable magazine. Now does it have two or more of the features? Does it have a folding or telescopic shoulder stock? No. Does it have a pistol grip that extends below it? No, because we do see on sporting firearms thumb-hole stocks.

INTERVIEWER: So, that would get it around the pistol-grip definition, just that little extra wood there?

ATF Spokesperson: Right. Does it have a bayonet lug? No. Does it have a flash suppressor? No. So, this firearm in this configuration would not meet the definition of a semi-automatic assault weapon.

NARRATOR: So, for example, while the AK-47 is covered by the ban, this "sporterized" AK-M, with virtually identical features, is perfectly legal. Drug lords and criminals alike can take heart in the looseness of American gun laws.

Foreign firearms producers have found that with its lack of gun regulations, the United States is a welcoming market for their wares. For example, NORINCO of China, the largest weapons manufacturer for the People's Liberation Army, exported over a million cheap firearms to the United States between 1989 and 1993. It was one of these weapons that was used to shoot-up the White House in October 1994.

NEWS ANNOUNCER: "It was a lone gunman, standing on Pennsyl-vania Avenue. He opened fire, 20 to 30 rounds, officials say, allegedly using this automatic weapon."

NARRATOR: Now American gun dealers have applied to import almost eight million weapons and seven billion rounds of ammuni-tion from Russia with a value of approximately $1 billion. The State Department has ordered a study of the implications of such a large influx of guns.

With 219,000 dealers licensed to sell firearms, we are a nation with more gun dealers than gas stations, a nation with an estimated 140 million firearms in private hands. The rise in US firearm deaths since the 1960s has paralleled a corresponding rise in the number of handguns. In peacetime, almost 40,000 Americans die from gunfire every year, another estimated quarter-million are wounded.

Mr. KLARE: We're finding in our own society, just as people are finding around the world that the easy availability of guns, the flood of guns into our communities is taking a rising toll in human life. And until we can get a handle on the international gun trade, we're going to see that violence escalate and more and more people losing their lives.

NARRATOR: Among governments and politicians, there has been little discussion to this point of controlling the interna-tional small arms trade.

Mr. GOOSE: I think that governments have a real attitude problem when it comes to the trade in light weapons and small arms. They not only don't want to pay attention to it, but when they do pay attention to it or make statements about it, it usually is along the lines of this is impossible to control, we're not going to be able to tell where every rifle or every pistol goes, so why should we worry about it. In my opinion, this is a very misguided way to go about things.

Mr. KLARE: It certainly is going to be very difficult to control this problem, there's no question about it. But we have to bear in mind that this has never been a priority for the United States or for the international community, so not very much has been done about it. I believe that if this became a priority, there are things that this government can do and that the United Nations and other governments jointly can do.

NARRATOR: Arms control proponents point out that one of the first steps towards getting a handle on the problem is to increase the amount of information available about the trade.

Mr. GOOSE: We need to have some international mechanism which will shed some daylight, some transparency on this trade in light weapons.

NARRATOR: Critics of the status quo have recommended the expansion of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms to include light weaponry. The Register was started following the 1991 war with Iraq and calls on member countries to report on the import, export and production of major conventional weapons, such as planes, tanks and ships. The inclusion of small arms would shed a great deal of light on this often hidden trade. However, part of the difficulty in controlling the trade is that much of it occurs through illicit channels.

Mr. KLARE: There should be closer cooperation between the United States and the intelligence and police authorities of other countries, especially in the former Soviet Union, to try to shut down some of these black market entrepreneurs who are fueling conflicts around the world.

NARRATOR: The United States used to have a law, Section 657 of the Foreign Assistance Act, that required a detailed reporting of every type of arms transfer, including small arms.

Mr. GOOSE: This was the single most valuable source of information on US arms trade, especially in the less than major weapons systems, and was the most useful source for trying to demand accountability on the part of both the recipients and the on the US Government.

NARRATOR: But Section 657 was eliminated by President Reagan in 1981.

Mr. GOOSE: If the US Government was to resume production of this report -- and I understand that they still have all the information on computer databases and it's simply a matter of printing it out and making it available -- this would be a tremendous step forward in terms of our knowledge about where US arms are going, to whom, and would give us a standard which we could hold up for other countries to match.

NARRATOR: As the world's biggest arms dealer in the overall value of sales, the United States is uniquely positioned to take a leadership role in limiting the global arms trade.

Mr. ROSSITER: To me, there's only on question in controlling weaponry: Who should be able to get their hands on the weapons? If you were not, you, your armed forces were not --your government was not selected by the people over which you rule, you have no right to American weaponry. And then the United States would go to other suppliers and say, 'We want you not to undercut us.'

NARRATOR: Just as the international community has recognized that nuclear proliferation is a threat to world stability, there must now be an acknowledgement that the same is true of small arms. Measured by the number of deaths, small arms constitute the world's major weapons problem.

It's clear that the post-Cold War world will continue to be wracked by regional conflicts fought primarily with small arms. As the lone remaining superpower, the United States carries a great amount of clout in the international arena. By putting the small arms issue on our political agenda, we can take the first steps to give hope to the millions left hopeless by war.

ADM CARROLL: What you have just seen is a shocking reminder of the violence which mars the world today. And it's not nuclear weapons which are killing thousands each week, it's small arms: lethal landmines, handguns, assault weapons, grenades. They may be small arms, but they are major weapons.

America is uniquely qualified to lead efforts to reduce the supply of these deadly weapons. We can't do it alone, but we must begin the process. We must restrain the flow and set an example which other nations can follow. The Cold War is over; now is the time to end the real wars by limiting the supply of small arms.

Until the next time, for "AMERICA'S DEFENSE MONITOR," I'm ADM Eugene Carroll.