> The biggest buyer of arms last year was Saudi Arabia, with $2.7 billion in
> new sales. The United Arab Emirates ranked second at $2.5 billion. Malaysia
> ranked third, with $2.1 billion.
Gotta love that Congressional Reserach Service. Looks like they completely forgot to add up the figures for sales to Taiwan (and other countries too, judging from the looks of it). The Stockholm International Peace Research Insitute estimates Taiwan purchased 4.65 billion US$ worth of arms (and that's in 1990 dollars, couldn't find a figure for contemporary moola), dwarfing Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and any other country you can think of.
For more info, check out www.sipri.se
Jonathan Lassen