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The Minister of the Interior, Cletus Avoka, has blamed the numerous armed conflicts in the West Africa sub-region on cross border trafficking of small arms and light weapons. That situation, he said, had led to the worsening of socio-economic and political crises as well as domestic conflicts experienced in member states. Mr Avoka said this yesterday at an orientation workshop for members of the Ghana National Commission on Small Arms (GNACSA) at Dodowa. The workshop was to afford participants the opportunity to make inputs on issues related to small arms and light weapons as well as their vision to curb the flow of such weapons across boundaries. He said as a result of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, the crime of drugs and human trafficking as well as money laundering had flourished making it difficult to control cross-border crime. �It is our duty to check these criminal activities else the African continent will not be able to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015,� he said. Mr. Avoka said that eight out of every 10 armed robbery cases in Ghana is perpetrated by the use of locally manufactured arms. �The question that comes to mind is, how we can develop when conflicts are fuelled by small arms, making it bloodier and more expensive to prosecute?� �It is to find answer to these numerous questions that the GNACSA board was reconstituted and charged with the responsibility to advice government on how to control and manage the proliferation of small arms and light weapons,� he added.