Bout, who was arrested Thursday in a joint US-Thai operation in Bangkok, is alleged to have been at the heart of a new kind of weapons trading that emerged from the ashes of the Cold War in 1991.

Various reports have linked Bout to sanctions-busting deals with west African nations, sales to conflict-riven Afghanistan in the 1990s, supplies to the US-led reconstruction effort in Iraq, and most recently with sales to Colombia's FARC rebels.

"This is a very organised network. It worked very efficiently and delivered like pizza -- very fast and without any red tape," said Moscow-based independent defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer.

It remains to be seen how Moscow will respond to Bout's arrest for allegedly supplying the FARC rebels, but he has previously freely travelled in and out of Russia.

Moscow-based analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky believes Russia may make a counter-bid for his extradition to prevent him spilling secrets to the United States.

Bout's speciality was less in buying and selling, than in delivering weapons with a minimum of formalities, where and when they were wanted, says Felgenhauer.

If so, his legendary deal-making tells only part of a story of a vast network of weapons trading in which intelligence agencies of various governments have often participated.

The 1990s were full of particularly lurid stories, such as an attempt, reported in the Washington Post, by Russian underworld figures to sell Colombian drug smugglers a submarine, helicopters and surface-to-air missiles.

More recently Felgenhauer says that Russian and Ukrainian pilots, who are a feature in the air industries of many African countries, have flown combat operations in conflicts in both Africa and in Macedonia's civil conflict in 2001.

Not that the United States has steered clear of intrigue, as illustrated by the story of former US naval officer Edmond Pope, who was arrested by Russia in 2000 while clinching a deal to buy Russian torpedoes from a testing facility on the shores of lake Issyk-Kul in ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

Pope, subsequently pardoned by the Kremlin, has insisted he thought the deal was entirely above board and had the consent of Russia's government.

Another Moscow-based defence analyst, Alexander Golts, believes Russia's government has greatly tightened control over its defence trade in the era of President Vladimir Putin.

But he concedes there may be weak spots elsewhere in the former Soviet Union and points to Ukraine's alleged sales of cruise missiles to Iran and China between 2000 and 2001.

Another source of concern for the West is Moldova and its breakaway territory of Transdnestr, home to a massive Soviet weapons depot as well as factories that continue to produce spare parts, says Felgenhauer.

The factories "are a source for the Russian defence industry. These same components can get onto the black market," he said.

One expert who monitors arms shipments in Africa, Eric Berman of the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey, says countries like Ukraine are now trying to account better for their weapons stocks, but that a lack of transparency in weapons sales around the world remains a major problem.

"It's not just the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and Russia that don't score highly," he told AFP. "You see it in the fact that we can only record about half of what we believe to be the legal trade in small arms and light weapons."

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