Iraq tops Arab states list in spending on armaments
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The institute's report , which was under the title of " military spending of the West continues decline , but rise everywhere else " briefed by " Shafaq News " , indicates developments in military spending around the world over the past year , both at the level of countries or regions .
The participant experts in the preparation of the report stress that the total global spending on armaments in 2013 amounted to about 1.75 trillion U.S. dollars , which reveals a decline of 1.9 percent from what was spent in 2012.
The reason behind this decline is a decline in military expenditures in Western countries , especially the United States in spite of increased military spending in the rest of the world by about 1.8 percent .
The report said that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have increased their spending on armament in 2013 , these three countries are among the 23 countries in all parts of the world has doubled its spending since 2004.
The report confirms that military spending in the Middle East rose by 4 percent in 2013 to reach about 150 billion dollars and that Iraq is currently at the forefront of the Arab states spending on armaments .
Iraq has already got the green light from the U.S. Congress to get the drones and Apache F-16 after it had been asked in the past to provide guarantees .
The United States have speed up delivering Iraq with weapons as it has been agreed upon under the agreement to withdraw from Iraq, known as the strategic framework agreement , which provides arming to the Iraqi army with American equipment .
Washington agreed last August to provide an integrated missile defense system worth 2.6 billion dollars and the F-16 fighter jets to Iraq to be delivered to it in the fall of 2014.
But Iraq has waved that it will resort to other countries for weapons and military equipment if the United States continued its reservation on the delivery of heavy weapons and fighter jets to Iraq .
Among these countries is Russia that has already signed a deal with Iraq worth four billion dollars to provide it with helicopter gunships and surveillance equipment .
Suspicions of corruption has been indicated in the arms deal , but the two sides seem to be going ahead with the completion of the deal after statements made by officials of the two countries during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister , Sergey Lavrov to Baghdad .