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World military spending: Europe down, Middle East up
 STOCKHOLM - Record overall military spending in 2005 masked divergent trends across the globe, with expenditure on the rise in the US and the Middle East but on the decline in Europe, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said on Monday.The United States remained the biggest worldwide spender with 48 percent of the 1.118 trillion dollar (885 million euros) pie and alone accounted for 80 percent of the 33-billion-dollar increase in global spending, it said in its annual report. But the Middle East was the region with the highest relative spending increase, mostly due to a massive increase in Saudi Arabias defence budget. Total military spending numbers for the region would have been even higher if Iraq and Qatar had not been excluded because of inconsistent data, SIPRI said. Posted by: Steve White 2006-06-13 |
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