CIVIL liberties campaigners in East Lancashire are to lobby local MPs in a bid to get a loophole in the law changed.

Amnesty International members plan to send petitions to Home Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw and Rossendale and Darwen MP Janet Anderson. The Blackburn with Darwen branch of the organisation wants the law changed to stop arms dealers selling products to countries where human rights are abused.

As the law stands, traders are free to sell arms to any country so long as weapons and munitions do not touch British soil.

Lori Marsden, chairman of the Blackburn with Darwen group, said: "The government's 'ethical' foreign policy has been badly dented by the use of £130 million of public funds to help Indonesia make the controversial purchase of British Aerospace military aircraft to use against the East Timorese.

"It needs to re-establish its ethical commitment by banning arms brokerage in the UK unless it complies with export control requirements, and persuading other governments around the world to do the same.

"There should be no sources of weapons of oppression for regimes to use against their own people."

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