What Do You Think?

[John.hergy]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=abkyS4.975YM

U.S. Backs Arms Trade Treaty at UN, Abandoning Bush Opposition
By Bill Varner - October 30, 2009 13:46 EDT

Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) -- The Obama administration voted today to support United Nations-sponsored talks on a treaty to regulate the $55 billion-a-year trade in conventional weapons, reversing prior U.S. opposition to negotiations begun in 2006.

The General Assembly, consisting of all 192 UN member governments, adopted a resolution setting out a timetable for talks during the next two years on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty, including a UN conference to produce a final accord in 2012. The vote was 153-1, with 19 abstentions.

“This is massive in its impact because the U.S. is the largest conventional arms trader in the world,” Brian Wood, disarmament expert for London-based Amnesty International, said in an interview. “The Obama administration has decided to enter into the negotiations and do the diplomatic heavy lifting.”

The U.S. trade in conventional weapons amounts to 40 percent of the global total, according to Wood. The resolution says the unregulated trade in conventional arms “can fuel instability, transnational organized crime and terrorism.”

The vote continues Obama administration moves to reverse the policies of President George W. Bush. Those actions have included joining the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, backing a General Assembly declaration urging the decriminalization of homosexuality and contributing government funds to a UN agency that offers abortion counseling.

The Bush administration was the only nation to oppose the 2006 resolution to create an international treaty on the sale of small arms and light weapons, and subsequent measures to continue the talks. The U.S. expressed concern about potential loopholes in a treaty and said national controls would be more effective.

Effect of U.S. Support

“Without U.S. support, the process may have been formally agreed in the sense of getting a majority vote, but negotiations would not have been conducted at a seriously high level,” Wood said.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement on Oct. 14 that the U.S. would support the negotiations on condition they are “under the rule of consensus decision-making needed to ensure that all countries can be held to standards that will actually improve the global situation.”

Clinton said the consensus, in which every nation has an effective veto on agreements, was needed “to avoid loopholes in the treaty that can be exploited by those wishing to export arms irresponsibly.”

The resolution says the 2012 conference will be conducted “on the basis of consensus.”

Zimbabwe cast the only vote against the resolution. China, Russia, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan and Cuba were among the nations that abstained from the vote.