Cape Town, Aug 10: South Africa has sold arms to India, Pakistan, Rwanda and Zimbabwe in the past two years, according to a report released by the government which has prompted warnings that it is breaking its own rules on arms sales and putting peace initiatives at risk.

The report shows that the local arms industry, the biggest in Africa, delivered "major sensitive significant" weapons - which range from missiles to attack helicopters - to nuclear-armed India and Pakistan in 2000 and 2001. The opposition Democratic Alliance charged: "The sale of equipment to countries such as India and Pakistan who are in a near state of war and to countries such as Rwanda and Zimbabwe place moral question marks on the government's commitment to international and regional peace and security.

Last week Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma defended the arms sales to India, saying it was not actually at war with Pakistan. "We are not fanning or encouraging any conflict there. We don't think that having sold arms to India violated in any way the rules we have set for ourselves," the minister told reporters.

Rwanda last year received weapons classified as "non-sensitive", but arms industry watchers said they believe these were spare parts for grade a weapons sold to the central African country before South Africa imposed an arms embargo on it in 1999.

The report from the National Committee on Conventional Arms Control (NCACC) was made public days after DRC President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame signed a South African-brokered peace agreement on July 30 to end their four-year-war in the former Zaire. Bureau Report