WEAPONS : Tugging the Reins of the Arms Trade : The Gulf War has prompted attempts by the U.N. and other bodies to restrict the flow.

In 1890, European ministers meeting in Brussels signed the General Act for the Repression of the African Slave Trade, agreeing among other things to ban the shipment of all arms and ammunition into Africa except flintlock guns and gunpowder. It was the first international attempt to restrict the flow of arms.

Other attempts followed, but almost all were doomed to failure. And today the world’s arms producers, most of them in industrialized nations, ship about $50 billion worth of weapons to eager armies, most of them in the Third World.

Tentative attempts to cut back on the arms trade, bolstered by the example of the Persian Gulf War, are under way. A special United Nations study group recently proposed the creation of an international register of what it calls “transfers in conventional arms” so everyone will know what arms are going where.

And the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, Soviet Union, China, Britain and France--have agreed informally to take more care when picking countries to receive their weapons. The five were the source of more than 80% of the arms shipped in the last two decades.

These efforts look feeble to some disarmament advocates. “A comprehensive register is only a first step,” said Maj. Britt Theorin, a member of the Swedish Parliament, at a recent news conference here. “We have to stop or drastically limit the arms trade.”

Some confusion has been caused by the attitude of the Bush Administration. President Bush told a joint session of Congress after the end of the Gulf War, “It would be tragic if the nations of the Middle East and Persian Gulf were now, in the wake of war, to embark on a new arms race.”

Yet the Administration has also made it clear that it intends to ship more arms to its allies in the Gulf so that they feel secure against possibile future aggression.

“President Bush talks peace,” said the Rev. William Sloan Coffin, a well-known peace activist, “but he sells arms.”

Although the term conventional arms may sound innocuous, the United Nations uses it to cover all arms except nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. All the arms used in the Gulf War--supersonic aircraft, missiles, attack helicopters, tanks--are classified as conventional.

According to the United Nations, the flow of arms has leveled off in recent years. Shipments increased from $14 billion a year in the early 1960s to a high of almost $60 billion in 1984, then decreased to $50 billion in 1988. About one-third of these arms went to the Middle East in the late 1980s.

The suppliers send arms to the Third World for two main reasons, either to bolster allies or make profits. An arms merchant such as the French firm Dassault sells half its arms abroad, according to the Council for a Livable World, a private organization headquartered in Boston. The high profits are attracting new suppliers such as Brazil, China, Israel, North Korea and Spain.

Third World countries seek the weapons to fight, reward or placate military forces, show off symbols of their sovereignty and strength, or deter enemies. Not all these reasons are foolish, and the U.N. study group agreed that “states have the right to maintain and equip armed forces for their defense.” But it urged prudence so that countries do not panic each other into an arms race.

FLOW OF ARMS, 1971-88

Major Exporters: Soviet Union: $311 (40%) United States: $202 (26%) France: $57 (7%) Britain: $31 (4%) West Germany: $20 (3%) China: $419 (2%) Czechoslovakia: $18 (2%) Poland: $17 (2%) Italy: $15 (2%) Switzerland: $7 (1%) Major Importers: Iraq: $75 (10%) Saudi Arabia: $45 (6%) Vietnam: $45 (6%) Syria: $38 (5%) Iran: $37 (5%) Libya: $37 (5%) India: $26 (3%) Israel: $22 (3%) Soviet Union: $21 (3%) Egypt: $21 (3%)

Figures are in billions of U.S. dollars followed by percentage of world total.

Source: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, reprinted by Council for a Liveable World.