But Mr Blair demurred: he wants to give Europe's weapons industry some chance of competing with its American rivals.
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One of the industry's most powerful weapons is its customers.
While the Chemical Manufacturers Association has been the most vocal industry advocate of the Chemical Weapons Convention, it represents only some 190 of the companies expected to be covered by the treaty.
Iran replies that some of the allegations make no sense, that some of the documents are forgeries and that the high-explosive tests and other activities listed by the agency were done to aid civilian industry or else develop conventional weapons.
The Bush administration says India's nuclear industry, though not its atomic weapons program, will be under tighter safeguards.
These are boom times for intellectual property lawyers, as every major player in the mobile phone industry decides that patents are important weapons in the battle for supremacy in the smartphone market.
What you see instead is an effort to shift risk to industry or simply cut the capability of weapons.
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Ratifiers must give the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemicals Weapons, the convention's overseer, details of any weapons they possess and of potentially dangerous chemicals used in their civilian industry.
Again, I think the insurance industry would want better tracking and safety devices built into the weapons.
However, most of the defense-industry workers are scattered among hundreds of local manufacturers that contribute parts and subassemblies for weapons.
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But, of course, the Iranian leaders say they're not after nuclear weapons, they're after nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, and they want to develop a nuclear power industry.
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