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Wed, Mar 27 2013
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations members on Wednesday were close to a deal on the first international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade, though delegates and rights groups said India, Iran or others could still block agreement.
Arms control campaigners and human rights advocates say one person dies every minute worldwide as a result of armed violence and a treaty is needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of weapons and ammunition that they argue helps fuel wars, atrocities and rights abuses.
United Nations member states began meeting last week in a final push to end years of discussions and hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over international conventional arms sales.
The world body's 193 member states received the last revision of the draft treaty ahead of the final day of the drafting conference on Thursday. Reuters questioned delegates from over a dozen countries who said they were cautiously optimistic that the treaty would be adopted unanimously.
"India, Syria and Iran are countries that could still cause trouble," a European diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But I'll wager the treaty will pass by consensus."
Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear program, is eager to ensure its arms imports and exports are not curtailed, diplomats say. Syria is in a two-year-old civil war and hopes Russian and Iranian arms keep flowing in, they added.
But they are under pressure to back the draft, envoys said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. official declined to say whether Washington would support the draft treaty.
"We are continuing to review the text with an eye toward ensuring that it accomplishes all of our goals, including that it protect the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade and of course that it not infringe upon the constitutional right of our citizens to bear arms," he said.
Several U.N. diplomats predicted Washington would vote yes.
The National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobby, opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight hard to prevent its ratification if it reaches Washington. The NRA says the treaty would undermine domestic gun-ownership rights.
The American Bar Association, an attorneys' lobbying group, last month disputed the NRA position on the treaty, saying in a paper that "ratification of the treaty would not infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment."
'DEFICIENCIES'
The chief British delegate, Ambassador Joanne Adamson, said the new draft treaty has many improvements over earlier drafts.
"These (improvements) include inclusion of ammunition in the scope of the treaty, a new article on preventing diversion of arms, and strengthened section on exports which are prohibited," she said. "Human rights are at the heart of this text."
The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world's biggest arms exporter - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support an arms treaty.
The point of an arms trade treaty is to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It would also create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.
Several human rights groups and arms control advocates, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Control Arms, praised the new draft. They said it had shortcomings but was a major improvement over an earlier draft that had too many loopholes.
"While there are still deficiencies in this final draft, this treaty has the potential to provide significant human rights protection and curb armed conflict and violence if all governments demonstrate the political will to implement it," said Brian Wood of Amnesty International.
But he made clear that there were problems with the text, including an overly narrow scope of types of arms covered. It covers tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers and small arms and light arms.
Predator drones and grenades are among the weapon categories that are not covered explicitly in the draft treaty.
Anna Macdonald of Oxfam said there were "some improvements" in the draft, though some problems remained she wanted fixed in the final hours before a decision is made by U.N. member states.
"We need a treaty that will make a difference to the lives of the people living in Congo, Mali, Syria and elsewhere who suffer each day from the impacts of armed violence," she said.
Rights groups complained about one possible loophole in the current draft involving defense cooperation agreements. Several diplomats who also oppose this loophole said it could exempt certain weapons transfers from the treaty.
Three delegates dubbed that provision the "India clause," because it was something India pushed hard for, they said.
(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Nations close to deal on U.N. arms trade treaty: envoys | Reuters
and
"Ted Bromund, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained earlier this week that the most recent draft of the treaty meant for the United States; the adoption of a “knowledge standard” about humanitarian abuses means the U.S. could be investigated by the U.N. for what it ought to have known about who it was selling weapons too. More importantly for individual firearms owners, Bromund writes that the draft “still refers to ‘end users’—individual firearm owners—in Article 11. It effectively makes the definitions of arms contained in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms nationally binding, which turns part of this voluntary program into a binding treaty commitment and would increase the pressure on the U.S. to include small arms in the formal register.” At Fox News, John Lott says the “national control list” the treaty wants each country to maintain could be used to regulate domestic firearm ownership."
from : Arms Trade Treaty Set to Pass United Nations; ?U.S. Virtually Certain to Go Along? - Hit & Run : Reason.com
Wed, Mar 27 2013
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations members on Wednesday were close to a deal on the first international treaty to regulate the $70 billion global conventional arms trade, though delegates and rights groups said India, Iran or others could still block agreement.
Arms control campaigners and human rights advocates say one person dies every minute worldwide as a result of armed violence and a treaty is needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of weapons and ammunition that they argue helps fuel wars, atrocities and rights abuses.
United Nations member states began meeting last week in a final push to end years of discussions and hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over international conventional arms sales.
The world body's 193 member states received the last revision of the draft treaty ahead of the final day of the drafting conference on Thursday. Reuters questioned delegates from over a dozen countries who said they were cautiously optimistic that the treaty would be adopted unanimously.
"India, Syria and Iran are countries that could still cause trouble," a European diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "But I'll wager the treaty will pass by consensus."
Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear program, is eager to ensure its arms imports and exports are not curtailed, diplomats say. Syria is in a two-year-old civil war and hopes Russian and Iranian arms keep flowing in, they added.
But they are under pressure to back the draft, envoys said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a U.S. official declined to say whether Washington would support the draft treaty.
"We are continuing to review the text with an eye toward ensuring that it accomplishes all of our goals, including that it protect the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade and of course that it not infringe upon the constitutional right of our citizens to bear arms," he said.
Several U.N. diplomats predicted Washington would vote yes.
The National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobby, opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight hard to prevent its ratification if it reaches Washington. The NRA says the treaty would undermine domestic gun-ownership rights.
The American Bar Association, an attorneys' lobbying group, last month disputed the NRA position on the treaty, saying in a paper that "ratification of the treaty would not infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment."
'DEFICIENCIES'
The chief British delegate, Ambassador Joanne Adamson, said the new draft treaty has many improvements over earlier drafts.
"These (improvements) include inclusion of ammunition in the scope of the treaty, a new article on preventing diversion of arms, and strengthened section on exports which are prohibited," she said. "Human rights are at the heart of this text."
The main reason the arms trade talks are taking place at all is that the United States - the world's biggest arms exporter - reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support an arms treaty.
The point of an arms trade treaty is to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It would also create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.
Several human rights groups and arms control advocates, including Amnesty International, Oxfam and Control Arms, praised the new draft. They said it had shortcomings but was a major improvement over an earlier draft that had too many loopholes.
"While there are still deficiencies in this final draft, this treaty has the potential to provide significant human rights protection and curb armed conflict and violence if all governments demonstrate the political will to implement it," said Brian Wood of Amnesty International.
But he made clear that there were problems with the text, including an overly narrow scope of types of arms covered. It covers tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers and small arms and light arms.
Predator drones and grenades are among the weapon categories that are not covered explicitly in the draft treaty.
Anna Macdonald of Oxfam said there were "some improvements" in the draft, though some problems remained she wanted fixed in the final hours before a decision is made by U.N. member states.
"We need a treaty that will make a difference to the lives of the people living in Congo, Mali, Syria and elsewhere who suffer each day from the impacts of armed violence," she said.
Rights groups complained about one possible loophole in the current draft involving defense cooperation agreements. Several diplomats who also oppose this loophole said it could exempt certain weapons transfers from the treaty.
Three delegates dubbed that provision the "India clause," because it was something India pushed hard for, they said.
(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Nations close to deal on U.N. arms trade treaty: envoys | Reuters
and
"Ted Bromund, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, explained earlier this week that the most recent draft of the treaty meant for the United States; the adoption of a “knowledge standard” about humanitarian abuses means the U.S. could be investigated by the U.N. for what it ought to have known about who it was selling weapons too. More importantly for individual firearms owners, Bromund writes that the draft “still refers to ‘end users’—individual firearm owners—in Article 11. It effectively makes the definitions of arms contained in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms nationally binding, which turns part of this voluntary program into a binding treaty commitment and would increase the pressure on the U.S. to include small arms in the formal register.” At Fox News, John Lott says the “national control list” the treaty wants each country to maintain could be used to regulate domestic firearm ownership."
from : Arms Trade Treaty Set to Pass United Nations; ?U.S. Virtually Certain to Go Along? - Hit & Run : Reason.com
