Weapons from Lebanon`s now-quiet civil war are being used in ethnic violence in Yugoslavia after militias here sold part of their arsenals to separatists in Slovenia and Croatia, security officials and news reports said Sunday.
The security officials said that $100 million worth of artillery, rocket launchers, machine guns and ammunition have been secretly sold on the Yugoslav market in the last four months, mostly by the largest Christian militia, the Lebanese Forces.
A leading Beirut newspaper, As Safir, reported that the Lebanese Forces had sent a shipload of weapons to one of the ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. The paper gave no details.
Lebanese militia officials said the kinds of military hardware used during 16 years of factional violence are most suited for urban warfare, should the Slovenians and Croatians decide to fight the Yugoslav national army.
Under a Lebanese reconciliation agreement worked out by rival Muslim and Christian groups, all private armies must lay down their weapons and disarm. More than a dozen militias had been stockpiling weapons since the civil warfare broke out in 1975. The government has told them to either hand over their weapons to the army or send them out of Lebanon.
