PARIS, April 17: France has become a major international marketplace in illegal arms, with many of the armaments brought in from such places as Serbia and ex-Eastern Europe, often to be reexported to other parts of the world, including the Middle East.

The arms have become so plethoric that a Kalashnikov can be bought for as little as 135 dollars, with arms-grade launch- rocket available at 1350 dollars.

The finding is one of many made in recent weeks by police and military authorities who have been studying the participation by French nationals in international terrorism, including Al Qaeda. The arrest of several Al Qaeda members early this year provided police with information which surprised them as to the importance of the traffic and the significance of the armaments making their way into and out of France.

Another major finding of their investigations is that the arms are no longer the small-calibre variety, but larger weapons characterized by police as arms of war. The “armes de guerre” are technically carefully controlled by national authorities, with certificates, when they can be acquired, necessary for their acquisition, import or export.

Among the more readily available of the weapons are the Kalachnikov or such varieties of the submachine gun as the Skorpio, Tokarev and Makarov. Launch-rockets are also finding their way onto markets usually located in the suburban quarters of such cities as Paris, Lyons and Marseilles.

So many of the high-calibre arms are finding their way into France that prices have come down substantially in recent weeks, with Kalashnikovs now available for as low as Euros 150 (135 dollars), with some launch-rockets available for Euros 1500 (1350 dollars), one-fourth what the prices were only a year or two ago when it was difficult anything outside of small-calibre arms on the illegal French markets.

The arms, says anti-terrorism specialist Xavier Raufer, “are coming in by the truckloads, conveyed into France by criminal elements in Serbia or the Albanian mafia.”

Raufer, who is also a leading specialist on Al Qaeda, notes that if the arms are making their way in such large quantities into France, it is because “there is a definite demand for high-calibre armaments coming from the local suburban gangs who until recently were satisfied with small-calibre arms and handguns.”

Moreover, he notes, not only are the arms in greater demand than ever, they are also being used more easily when the suburban gangs decide to attack a bank, or better still, an armoured car transporting funds. The recent police findings confirm a series of attacks undertaken last year largely on the Cote d’Azur by criminals who resorted not only to machine-guns but also launch-rockets to attack their prey.

Police reports indicate that last year alone more than 30 launch-rockets were seized from criminal gangs who had used them or were planning to use them at a number of locations, not only the Mediterranean, where many of the arms are imported into France, but also the Paris region, where, in recent weeks, they’ve been used on a regular basis by armed gangs.

For his part, an official of Alliance, a powerful police union that has also made public the importance of the traffic, says that “the arms definitely come in from the Balkans, and are brought in by the boat or truck load, just as if they were drugs, and are delivered quite easily to such places as Cannes and Nice on the Mediterranean, as well as Lyons, Paris and Grenoble.”

From France many of the arms are re-exported back across the French border “just as easily as they came in,” says the official.