*EPF103 08/20/01
U.N. Small Arms Conference a Success, U.S. Official Says
(Action plan focuses on illicit arms trafficking) (1080)
By Merle D. Kellerhals, Jr.
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- The action plan that emerged from the U.N. conference on illicit trafficking in small arms and light weapons has strengthened export controls, embargo enforcement, arms brokering enforcement, and assistance to affected regions, says a State Department negotiator.
The politically binding, though voluntary, Program of Action that was accepted by more than 140 nations July 21 places considerable stress on action, Herbert L. Calhoun, deputy division chief in the Office of Policy, Plans and Analysis at the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said in a recent interview.
"It's one thing to have a lot of hot rhetoric in the heat of battle, it's quite a different thing when you are signing on the dotted line to actually carry out those actions," he said. "One good thing about the Program of Action is that it has a strong, aggressive follow up mechanism.
"In two years we will sit down and talk about the progress. And in five years we will have a review conference where progress will be assessed."
Participating nations agreed to a plan designed to stem the illegal circulation of millions of small arms and light weapons into the world's conflict areas, developed during a U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects held July 9-21 in New York.
The Program of Action, agreed to by consensus, encourages nations:
-- to ensure that manufacturers use markings on small arms and light weapons to make it easier to trace illicitly trafficked weapons;
-- to establish procedures to monitor legal sales, transfer and stockpiling;
-- to establish laws to regulate arms brokers;
-- to establish controls over the export and transit of small arms and light weapons;
-- to destroy surplus stocks of small arms; and
-- to urge governments to criminalize the illegal manufacture, possession and trade of these weapons.
The conference was the first meeting on illicit trafficking in small arms, which have been the weapons of choice in 46 of the 49 conflicts fought during the 1990's -- conflicts which U.N. officials estimate have left 4 million people dead, 90 percent of them civilians. The U.N. estimates a worldwide stock of more than 500 million firearms and puts the death toll from their use at at least 500,000 a year.
Calhoun said the 87-paragraph document the United States agreed to calls on nations to strengthen export controls, enforce embargos, and regulate illicit arms brokering. He said it also enhances assistance to affected regions, for destruction of illicit small arms as well as for stockpile management and management of arms for demobilization.
The United States is one of only a handful of nations that has destroyed more than 100,000 illicit weapons, Calhoun said. "We have destroyed 100,000 with Norway, Germany and Albania. And as the conference was in progress, we signed an agreement with Bulgaria on Thursday, July 19, to destroy another 77,000."
The United States entered the conference with both offensive and defensive goals, Calhoun said. Most comment has concerned the two defensive goals, focusing on the U.S. rejection of text dealing with civilian possession of firearms and placing a blanket ban on arms sales to all non-state groups. Yet little has been said about the many positive U.S. goals -- most of which made it into the Program of Action, he said.
"We had warned the international community as far as nine months out of the conference that we could not accept any controls on civilian possession of firearms, because we consider that beyond the U.N. mandate for the conference," Calhoun said. Since the campaign began for the U.N. conference on small arms trafficking, both Britain and Australia "have passed gun laws that affected their private citizens, and in each of these cases, there was no outside interference or United Nations involvement in their domestic decision."
"Nobody has said that civilian possession of arms is one of the problems, is one of the reasons illicit trafficking is taking place in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola and Mozambique, and places like that. Nobody has intimated that civilian possession is a key issue as far as this action plan is concerned," Calhoun said.
The second defensive goal, which was to eliminate references to insurgents, or non-state actors, in the action plan was considerably more complicated, he said. "We thought it would preclude being able to give arms to oppressed groups, such as victims of genocide, and it violated traditions of the American Constitution. We were sort of a non-state actor group when we founded this country."
Calhoun said the United States is not advocating giving firearms to all non-state actors, but does want the right to provide arms under certain circumstances.
The conferees agreed to a review meeting in five years after the United States lifted its objections, he said. "Our objections were that the review process should not be 'automatic and empty,'" he said. "So what we managed to do, as part of our agreement to go along with the consensus, was to make sure that the venue and timing of the review process were tied to a United Nations resolution."
Often in U.N. negotiations, Calhoun said, a nation does not get everything it thinks should be in the action plan. "One of the things we would have liked to see in the document was a reference to corruption," he said. "One of the big problems in the affected states is that no matter what measures you devise there are still going to be corrupt officials who can see making profits in transferring illicit arms. That's a gaping hole in this document.
"It's missing and we were very much concerned that there should be something in it that deals specifically with corruption, but we weren't able to get that in there."
Calhoun said that during the review process it may be possible to add provisions to close loopholes left in the Program of Action.
"We also would have liked to have seen the measure on re-export controls strengthened," he said. "I think the text says now that countries should make every effort to ensure that re-export controls are implemented. We would rather have had it state that states should ensure that re-export controls are fully implemented."
(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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