UNITED NATIONS – Supporters of a U.N. treaty designed to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade were optimistic that a final draft circulated a day before Thursday’s deadline will reach consensus.
Negotiators reconvened last week in a final attempt to reach a deal on the Arms Trade Treaty, which would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers.
U.N. diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because negotiations have been private, said Wednesday the United States was virtually certain to go along with the latest text.
Hopes of reaching agreement on what would be a landmark treaty were dashed last July when the U.S. said it needed more time to consider the proposed accord — a move quickly backed by Russia and China. In December, the U.N. General Assembly decided to hold a final conference and set Thursday as the deadline for reaching agreement.
“We need a treaty,” China’s U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong told The Associated Press. “We hope for consensus.”
Questions remain on whether Iran, Egypt, India and several other countries that had serious concerns about the text would go along with the draft, which requires agreement of all 193 U.N. member states for adoption.
There has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime.
“It’s important for each and every country in the world that we have a regulation of the international arms trade,” Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig told the AP. “There are still some divergencies of views, but I trust we can overcome them.”
The draft treaty does not control the domestic use of weapons in any country, but it would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms, parts and components and to regulate arms brokers. It would prohibit states that ratify the treaty from transferring conventional weapons if they would violate arms embargoes or if they would promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
The final draft makes this human rights provision even stronger, adding that the export of conventional arms should be prohibited if they could be used in the commission of attacks on civilians or civilian buildings such as schools and hospitals.
The National Rifle Association has portrayed the draft treaty as a threat to gun ownership rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and has lobbied to defeat the proposal at the U.N.
The NRA last week praised the Senate’s passage of an amendment to the Democratic budget proposal that would prevent the U.S. from entering into the treaty.
The measure, introduced by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., passed on a 53-46 vote.
“Thanks to the efforts of Senator Inhofe, we are one step closer to ensuring the U.N. will not trample on the freedoms our founding fathers guaranteed to us,” Chris W. Cox, executive director of NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement released following the vote.
Ammunition has been a key issue, with some countries pressing for the same controls on ammunition sales as arms, but the U.S. and others opposed such tough restrictions. The draft calls for each country that ratifies the treaty to establish regulations for the export of ammunition “fired, launched or delivered” by the weapons covered by the convention.
The Control Arms coalition, which represents about 100 organizations worldwide campaigning for a strong treaty, and diplomats from countries that support them, said this wouldn’t cover hand grenades and mines.
India and other countries had insisted that the treaty have an opt-out for government arms transfers under defense cooperation agreements. The new text appears to keep that loophole, stating that implementation of the treaty “shall not prejudice obligations” under defense cooperation agreements by countries that ratify the treaty.
“Making this treaty was like making a sausage: Everyone has added an ingredient,” said Ted Bromund, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
“Unfortunately, that has produced a document that leans much too far towards satisfying the concerns of the Arab Group and Mexico. The former view it as a rebellion prevention plan, while the latter wants a text that edges towards its view that the domestic firearms market in the U.S. should be subject to treaty regulation,” he said.
But Daryl Kimball, executive director of the independent Washington-based Arms Control Association, said, “The emerging treaty represents an important first step in dealing with the unregulated and illicit global trade in conventional weapons and ammunition, which fuels wars and human rights abuses worldwide.”
He said the text could have been stronger and more comprehensive, but it can still make an important difference.
“The new treaty says to every United Nations member that you cannot simply ‘export and forget,’” Kimball said.
In considering whether to authorize the export of arms, the draft says a country must evaluate whether the weapon would be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian laws or be used by terrorists or organized crime. The final draft would allow countries to determine whether the weapons transfer would contribute to or undermine peace and security.
Anna Macdonald, Oxfam’s head of arms control, said the scope of the weapons covered in the latest draft is still too narrow.
“We need a treaty that covers all conventional weapons, not just some of them,” she said. “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.”
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
ATF gunwalking scandal
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Weapons recovered by Mexican military in Naco, Sonora, Mexico on November 20, 2009. They include weapons bought two weeks earlier by Operation Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino, who would buy 723 guns during the operation.[1]
“Gun walking”, or “letting guns walk”, was a tactic of the Arizona Field Office of the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). They ran a series of “gunwalking” sting operations[2][3] between 2006[4] and 2011[2][5] in the Tucson and Phoenix area where the ATF “purposely allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal straw buyers, hoping to track the guns to Mexican drug cartel leaders.”[6] These operations were done under the umbrella of Project Gunrunner, a project intended to stem the flow of firearms into Mexico by interdicting straw purchasers and gun traffickers within the United States.[7]
The stated goal of allowing these purchases was to continue to track the firearms as they were transferred to higher-level traffickers and key figures in Mexican cartels, with the expectation that this would lead to their arrests and the dismantling of the cartels.[6][8][9] The tactic was questioned during the operations by a number of people, including ATF field agents and cooperating licensed gun dealers.[10][11][12][13][14] During Operation Fast and Furious, by far the largest “gunwalking” probe, the ATF monitored the sale of about 2,000[1]:203[15] firearms, of which only 710 were recovered as of February 2012.[1]:203 A number of straw purchasers have been arrested and indicted; however, as of October 2011, none of the targeted high-level cartel figures have been arrested.[6]
Guns tracked by the ATF have been found at crime scenes on both sides of the Mexico–United States border, and the scene of the death of at least one U.S. federal agent, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. The “gunwalking” operations became public in the aftermath of Terry’s murder.[2] Dissenting ATF agents came forward to Congress in response.[16][17] According to Humberto Benítez Treviño, former Mexican Attorney General and chair of the justice committee in the Chamber of Deputies, related firearms have been found at numerous crime scenes in Mexico where at least 150 Mexican civilians were maimed and killed.[18] As investigations have continued, the operations have become increasingly controversial in both countries, and diplomatic relations have been damaged as a result.[2]
As a result of a dispute over the release of Justice Department documents related to the scandal, Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of the Cabinet of the United States to be held in criminal contempt of Congress on June 28, 2012.[19][20] Earlier that month, President Obama had invoked executive privilege for the first time in his presidency over the same documents.[21][22]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
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