A World Armed and in Conflict : A Swedish institution keeps close track of arms transfers and offers independent advice on their control.

By WILLIAM TUOHY

July 12, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

STOCKHOLM —

As President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev inch toward a formal summit that could produce more reductions in strategic arms, nettlesome issues have arisen on how each side will deal with some key data about vital aspects of the other’s arsenal.

The current Soviet-U.S. agonizing over the arms verification process indirectly has served to underscore the longstanding importance of accurate, independent information in any peace negotiations--a reality that, in many circles, inevitably leads to Stockholm, where the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has kept a stern eye on how the world arms itself and makes war.

For 25 years, the institute, better known by its acronym, SIPRI, has earned a worldwide reputation as being second to none among independent agencies for recording the transfer of weapons and offering dispassionate advice on controlling the flow of arms.

It avoids emotional declarations on the arms race. Instead, it accumulates facts about where arms come from, where they go and how much nations spend on them.

Many experts rely on SIPRI’s research on arms control, particularly now, with world leaders focusing not only on strategic arms reductions between the Soviets and the Americans but also on cuts in the amount of weaponry headed to countries in the Middle East.

To keep pace with the changing times, SIPRI--with 50 staff members, including 20 scholars from 13 nations--is shifting its research from analyzing the weapons of the East-West powers to other areas where conflict may be more likely in the aftermath of the Cold War.

In Europe, for example, the institute is researching such issues as the revival of nationalism in Eastern Europe and its implications for European security.

In the Middle East, SIPRI--whose work is supported by the Swedish government and an array of international organizations, including the Ford and MacArthur foundations and the Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz foundations--has heightened its monitoring of arms traffic.

The institute’s latest work is part of a tradition that has seen it publish 150 books and reports in its field, the best known being its annual yearbook, “World Armaments and Disarmament.”

In its latest yearbook, SIPRI, which celebrated its silver jubilee on July 1, points out that the global value of trade in conventional weapons in 1990 was $21.7 billion, a decrease of 35% from 1989. The Soviet Union and the United States continued to be the largest exporters of major weapons, accounting for nearly 70%.

The current yearbook, which contains authoritative articles about various aspects of global conflicts and world armaments, declares that, despite the end of the Cold War, there is “no outbreak of peace” to prompt SIPRI to pause in its work.

The institute, whose board over the years has included some of the most distinguished public figures in Europe, was founded on July 1, 1966, during the anti-Vietnam War movement. Stockholm, the capital of peace-loving Sweden, then was a center of anti-war activism, the home to such organizations as the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal, which heatedly condemned the American role in Southeast Asia.

But SIPRI was “never involved in the peace movement. We sought to maintain our professionalism. We have been concerned with fact gathering, not propaganda,” said Adam Daniel Rotfeld, the institute’s newly appointed director.

“We try to stick to the identifiable facts from open sources. Others who make sweeping judgments are often overtaken by events--as we have seen in Europe during the past two years,” said Rotfeld, 53, a career diplomat who specializes in security matters.

Documenting the arms trade--tracking transfers, military expenditures and monitoring the latest information on nuclear, chemical and biological weapons--are among SIPRI’s longest running projects.

“The need to make an informed opinion possible is greater than ever,” declared Walther Stuetzle, the institute’s outgoing director and a German defense specialist.

As for the future, Rotfeld said: “The great division is no longer between East and West, communism and democracy, but between the rich and poor, the stable and the unstable nations. There are still unstable nations in the center of Europe, as well as in the Third World. SIPRI can act as an early warning system, producing the kind of weapons information that nations can use to reduce the threat of war.”

Tuohy, based in London, was recently on assignment in Sweden.

Turmoil

Thirty-one major armed conflicts were waged in 1990, SIPRI reported, two fewer than raged in 1989.

A conflict in Namibia was resolved, but a new one in Liberia led to more than 10,000 battle-related casualties. Among the major armed conflicts were:

In Europe: Northern Ireland

In the Mideast: Iran, Iraq, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon and Turkey

In Central and South America: Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru

In Africa: Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Liberia, Morocco-Western Sahara, Mozambique, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan and Uganda

In South Asia: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, India-Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka

In Pacific Asia: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and The Phillipines

The Arms Merchants

SIPRI annually compiles a list of the 100 largest arms producers in the nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Third World. In the Top 100, 15 nations are represented, but almost half of the firms are American. Not only the biggest but the largest number of arms producers are American.

1. McDonnell Douglas Co.

2. Lockheed

3. General Dynamics

4. General Electric

5. General Motors

6. Raytheon

7. British Aerospace

8. Rockwell International

9. Boeing

10. Northrop

The Major Conventional Weapons Exporters

In U.S. millions, 1989 figures