ABSTRACT
This chapter overviews the most salient aspects of arms proliferation in the Middle East, and assesses the measures which have been proposed to deal with it. It focuses on the France's approach to the problem. On conventional weaponry, the importance of weapons transfers to the French military industry is well-known and hardly needs to be restated. The notion of restraint on such transfers is not entirely new in France, given its brief participation with the US and the UK in the ill-fated Near East Arms Coordinating Committee under the Tripartite Declaration. The issue of ballistic missiles has of course become even more salient after the Gulf War. France is one of the seven original adherents to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines, and in spite of some occasional quibbles with the United States, the French have undertaken the role of permanent contact point for the expanding number of MTCR states.
