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DESO will close!

From Speak:

SPEAK's campaign to close DESO with Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) has succeeded at long last! We warmly welcome the Prime Minister's announcement that he will shut DESO the arms marketing unit funded by public money. SPEAK have been praying and campaigning about this since 2003 and we hope it will mean an end to the wider Government promotion and support of the arms trade that our Counting the Cost arms trade campaign focusses on. Read more in SPEAK's press release and take action with our sample letter.

The Prime Minister's announcement said that in future military export promotion will be the responsibility of UK Trade and Investment, the body that supports all UK exports. UKTI reports to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the former Department of Trade & Industry. We will monitor UKTI to make sure that military exports, which form less than 2% of total UK exports, do not use a disproportionate amount of its resources.

Take Action Today - let's keep up the pressure!
- Please write to the Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London SW1 2AA or email him saying how delighted you are that DESO is to shut and expressing your hope that this is the first step towards ending all subsidies for arms exports - see our sample letter.
- Pray that DESO's closure will see a real shift in wider government support and promotion of the arms trade!

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