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UN Negotiators Agree on Small-arms Trade
Secretary General Kofi Annan on Saturday welcomed "important first steps" agreed upon at a UN conference on the worldwide small-arms trade that concluded with a watered-down final statement after hours of late-night bargaining.
The conference was to have ended late Friday but stretched into the early hours of Saturday, with the stance of the United States a major point of contention among delegates negotiating the non-binding 85-point document.
"The secretary-general warmly welcomes the news today that the United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects was able to reach a consensus on many important first steps in alleviating this grave threat to international peace and security," said a statement released late Saturday.
Annan in particular congratulated African states which "demonstrated their willingness to compromise ... in order to begin this historic process of constructive global action to combat this common challenge."
The United States appeared to have given up the least in the deal finally struck around 6^"I'm happy to tell you that we have a document that reached consensus," conference president Camilo Reyes told the assembled delegates. "We could have obtained a better document, no doubt, but we have a good start."
Small arms are estimated to be used in killing around 500 million people each year, 90 percent of them civilians.
Even the original document had been judged insufficiently stringent by various delegates and non-governmental organizations.
The most difficult sticking point, according to the diplomats, was the wish of numerous countries, especially African countries, to have the statement restrict the sale of small arms to sovereign states only.
On this point, delegates representing countries in Africa -- the continent worst affected by internecine warfare -- had the support of European countries, China, India and Arab countries, according to diplomatic sources who declined to be named.
But the United States argued that to endorse this measure would be to restrict countries' foreign policy, and it was unwilling to give up the opportunity for companies to sell weapons to non-state actors -- understood to mean rebel movements.
The African countries withdrew their proposal and the US position prevailed.
The United States, a country where arms manufacturers constitute a politically influential lobby, also argued successfully that the conference's final statement should not seek to have legal ownership of small arms regulated.
In return for the omission of such an initiative, the United States agreed that a follow-up conference should be held by 2006 at the latest -- as had been sought by European countries, who want to keep up the momentum on disarmament.
In his statement, Annan urged member states and their citizens to "consolidate today's gains and to take additional steps to address this threat."
Pointedly, he noted "the great potential benefits for all States from improved controls over both the uncontrolled private ownership of military-standard weapons and, even more critical, the transfer of such arms to non-state groups."
The action plan contained in the final UN statement "set the basis for cooperative action to try to address some very serious problems caused by flows of illicit small arms in areas of instability," said Lincoln Bloomfield, US assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.
Analyst Rebecca Peters of the Open Society Institute, meanwhile, voiced an opinion typical of many critics of the US stance.
"It's unbelievably selfish that the most powerful nation in the world, that produces more than half of the small arms in the world, is prepared to jeopardize the safety of millions of people in other countries purely for the sake of pandering to its own domestic lobbying interest," she said.
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