US remains the world's biggest military arms dealer

Despite recession-related decline in sales - Italy in second place

Washington - The United States has expanded despite a
recession-induced decline in global arms sales, according to a study
by the U.S. Congress in 2008 its top position as the largest arms
dealer on. As the "New York Times" (Sunday on the Internet), reported
to the U.S. accounted for 68.4 percent of the global arms trade. The
signed weapons contracts with the U.S. had had a value of 37.8 billion
dollars (26.4 billion euros). 2007, there were $ 25.4 billion.

The increase was due not only to large orders from new customers in
the Middle East and Asia but also to the ongoing global demand for
U.S. arms, it said.

Second place in the global arms trade have held Italy with 3.7
billion dollars. Russia is in third place with $ 3.5 billion. In 2007,
there were still $ 10.8 billion for Moscow. Worldwide arms deals worth
$ 55.2 billion had been settled. That would mean a decline of 7.6
percent compared to 2007, wrote on the paper. The decline in the arms
trade last year was due to the fact that many countries had taken
because of the recession of the award of new contracts spacing, wrote
the report's author, Richard Grimmett