The UN General Assembly has adopted a historic treaty to control the trade in conventional arms, voting it through by a huge majority.

Member-states voted by 154 votes to three, with 23 abstentions, to control a trade worth $70bn annually.

The treaty went to a vote after Syria, Iran and North Korea blocked its adoption by consensus.

Russia and China, some of the world's biggest exporters, were among those who abstained from the vote in New York.

The treaty prohibits states from exporting conventional weapons in violation of arms embargoes, or weapons that would be used for acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or terrorism.

It also requires states to prevent conventional weapons reaching the black market.

Before the vote, Australia's ambassador to the UN, Peter Woolcott, had said the final draft of the treaty was a compromise text to bring together the broadest range of stakeholders.

"We owe it to those millions,often the most vulnerable in society, whose lives have been overshadowed by the irresponsible and illicit international trade in arms,'' he said.

But Russia's Vitaly Churkin described as a significant shortcoming the lack of a clause in the draft treaty about banning the supply of weapons to non-state entities.

Syrian concerns

The assembly had heard from member-states' ambassadors objecting to, or supporting, the draft.

Syria's Bashar Jaafari said his country did not object to regulating the international arms trade, but opposed the draft because it did not refer to the arming of "non-state terrorist groups".

Some of the countries behind the draft treaty, he said, were "fully engaged in supplying terrorist groups [in Syria] with all kinds of lethal weapons".

The BBC's Paul Adams, in Washington, says the Syrian government, which depends on arms imports from Russia and Iran, is clearly worried about its ability to continue fighting its civil war.

Cuba's Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez said his country would abstain from the vote, saying the draft contained "ambiguities" which gave it "serious limitations" and that it favored the interests of arms exporters.

But proposing the draft, Costa Rica's Eduardo Ulibarri said the treaty showed the UN was an "indispensable organization in the 21st Century".

Long negotiation

Diplomats have worked for nearly a decade to agree on a set of principles to control the flow of such arms.

Attempts to agree the treaty last year broke down after the US, followed by Russia and China, said they needed more time to consider the issues.

Last week, a UN treaty-drafting conference failed to reach consensus after objections from Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Iran said the treaty was full of flaws and loopholes and North Korea said it was unbalanced.

The draft was then sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who was asked on behalf of nations backing the treaty to put it to a vote in the General Assembly on Tuesday.

In the US, the biggest pro-gun lobby group, the National Rifle Association, has vowed to fight against ratification of the treaty by the Senate, although the UN says the treaty does nothing to interfere with domestic firearms legislation. (Source: BBC)

N.R.A. details school guards plan

WASHINGTON--With the Senate set to debate gun control legislation next week, the National Rifle Association on Tuesday made good on its promise to develop a plan to train and arm security guards at every school in the nation.

The recommendation, among 225 pages of proposals to improve school security, was the culmination of three months of work by a task force led by Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican congressman from Arkansas, who unveiled the plan before a packed news conference with an unusually heavy security presence, including a bomb-sniffing yellow Labrador retriever. A dozen officers in both plain clothes and uniforms stood watch as Mr. Hutchinson spoke; before the event began, one of them warned several photographers to “remain stationary” until it was over.

The rifle association’s executive director, Wayne LaPierre, was not in the room.

Mr. Hutchison said “the presence of armed security personnel adds a layer of security and diminishes response time” in a shooting. He cited one school shooting that was thwarted by an assistant principal who ran to his truck to retrieve a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

Mr. Hutchinson said that his task force, which included former Secret Service officials and the head of a school security officers’ organization, was independent, though it was financed by the rifle association, and that it would be up to the rifle association to accept or reject the recommendations.

The panel, which conducted what it called comprehensive security assessments at campuses around the country, said individual schools should make the decision about whether to post armed guards. And it recommended that officers who are armed should take a 40- to 60-hour training course to be developed by the rifle association based on a model the task force has designed.

The broader report called on the rifle association to work with state and federal officials to develop a comprehensive school security plan that would include not only armed officers, but also online tools to help schools assess their vulnerabilities. Most schools do not have formal written security policy, the task force found, and that even when such plans exist they are often inadequate. The panel recommended that every school come up with an “all-hazards approach” in dealing with security threats.

But how and whether such a plan would be put into effect, and what it would cost, was unclear on Tuesday. When Mr. LaPierre announced what he called the “National Model School Shield Program” at a news conference a week after the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., in December, gun control advocates and even some television commentators dismissed his idea. Mr. LaPierre, seeming to anticipate the reaction, struck a defiant tone, criticizing what he called “the political class in Washington” and predicting newspaper headlines declaring that “guns are evil and have no place in society.” He called for recruiting volunteers, perhaps military veterans or retired police officers, to work in schools, but Mr. Hutchinson said Tuesday that his task force decided that idea would not work because school superintendents did not seem interested in it.

The timing of Tuesday’s announcement was not a coincidence: Congress will wrap up its spring recess after this week and is expected to consider gun legislation when lawmakers return to Washington next Tuesday. President Obama has called for tough new controls on gun ownership, but the prospects for such legislation are murky, a testimony to the rifle association’s prowess as a lobbying force.

A plan to revive and revamp a ban on assault weapons, which expired in 2004, is almost certain to be defeated. Mr. Obama is pushing for a measure that would impose mandatory background checks for gun buyers, and the Senate’s Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, has promised to present a bill that would expand background checks to the floor for a vote.

Senate passage is hardly assured. Most Republicans oppose background checks, and some Democrats, particularly those from conservative-leaning states like North Dakota and North Carolina, are nervous about the measure. Even if background checks do pass the Senate, they will face stiff opposition in the House. (Source: The New York Times)

Story Date: April 3, 2013