Kenya to Host Regional
Conference on Small Arms
NAIROBI (March 7) XINHUA - A regional ministerial conference on the proliferation of
small arms is to be held in Nairobi from Sunday to next Wednesday, Kenyan Foreign Affairs
Minister Bonyana Godana announced Tuesday.
The conference, the first ever in Africa, will bring together foreign ministers and
senior officials from the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of African countries with an aim
to adopt a common stand on the issue before the United Nations conference on small arms in
the year 2001, Godana said.
The proliferation of small arms caused great insecurity in the region and one country
can not solve the problem without the cooperation from neighboring countries, he noted.
Some illegal arms flowed into Kenya from neighboring countries like Sudan and Somalia, where the conflicts are still raging, he said.
Godana revealed that police had seized about 600 illegal guns in Nairobi Last year.