inside the glass house

NEW YORK - The big guns will meet in New York later this month to shoot it out on small arms. The political showdown will not be at high noon — Gary Cooper-style — but spread over a two-week period June 26 through July 7.

The gathering is billed as one of the largest groups — some 2,000 representatives from UN member states, international organisations and civil society groups — to meet under the General Assembly's near-crumbling roof to discuss the political, economic and military impact of some 600 million small arms currently in circulation worldwide, both in open and black markets.

The United Nations argues that small arms — including assault rifles, grenade launchers, anti-personnel landmines, sub-machine guns and pistols — are primarily responsible for much of the death and destruction in conflicts throughout the world. They are the real weapons of mass destruction — not nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. In 2005, small arms alone were responsible for the deaths of over half a million people — 10,000 per week.

Perhaps the most vocal group at the UN conference would be the National Rifle Association (NRA), one of the most powerful political lobbying groups in the US, which subscribes to the philosophy that "guns don't kill people — only people kill people."

So, logically you don't ban guns, but eliminate the criminal elements illegally armed with guns, not legitimate American citizens who have the constitutional guarantee to "bear arms" — not to mention battle tanks, fighter planes and guided and unguided missiles.

But the UN conference — despite the NRA's misguided propaganda — is not aimed at taking away the right of Americans to legally carry arms. Rather it is mandated to review the successes and failures of a Programme of Action (POA) adopted five years ago, primarily to curb the proliferation of "illicit" small arms and light weapons, and strengthen international efforts towards that ultimate goal. But the POA is only a politically-binding instrument, not a legally binding UN convention which member states have to necessarily abide by. Since it is not mandatory, it also lacks real teeth.

"The UN Programme of Action does not intend to eradicate or control weapons that are legally manufactured, purchased or traded, in accordance with respective national laws and regulations of countries," says Prasad Kariyawasam, Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the UN, who has already been elected to chair the upcoming small arms conference. The conference will not re-negotiate the Programme of Action, adopted unanimously by the 191-member states in July 2001, but will take a closer look at the progress made in implementing it, he said.

But the real conflict at the meeting will be a rousing battle between civil society groups and UN member states who are major producers of small arms, including the US, Russia, China, and even countries such as Egypt and India.

Despite the availability of more than 600 million small arms, there is no international treaty to control the reckless proliferation of these light weapons worldwide. "Dinosaur bones and old postage stamps", yes, but a treaty on small arms, no, says Sarah Margon, director of Oxfam. "No one but a criminal would knowingly sell a gun to a murderer, yet governments can sell weapons to regimes with a history of human rights violations or to countries where weapons will go to war criminals," she points out.

But the proposal for an international treaty is a non-starter because most of the arms manufacturing countries are strongly opposed to any curbs on the production or sale of small arms. There is both big time politics and equally big money riding on it.

The US is also vocal in its opposition to a proposal by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and peace activists to place restrictions on the transfer of weapons to rebel groups. The US wants to sustain its legitimate right to arm rebel groups — say in Somalia, Iraq, Iran, Sudan or the Democratic Republic of Congo — particularly as part of its so-called global war on terrorism. Or it wants the right to take sides in domestic conflicts between pro and anti-US allies.

Last week the US found itself arming the wrong rebel groups in Somalia when an Islamist group triumphed over a group of US-armed warlords who were described as proxies in the war on terror. So, you win some and lose some. And that's another story.

The supply of arms to the LTTE in Sri Lanka, for example, is deemed an "illegal" flow of arms to a rebel group. But if there are any governments involved in such clandestine supplies — for political or other reasons — they may not want to be subjected to any UN supervision, monitoring or restrictions.

Meanwhile, there have been new case study reports from Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone, three countries in conflicts or in post-war situations, focusing on "irresponsible arms transfers".

All three countries produce very few arms, but they have been flooded with weapons, "which have been used to kill, maim, displace and impoverish hundreds of thousands of people", according to Denise Searle, Amnesty International's senior campaign director.

"Time and again, peacekeeping efforts have been undermined by the failure of governments to introduce effective arms controls," he said. "For the sake of millions of men, women and children who live in continual fear of armed violence, world leaders must seize this historic opportunity to begin negotiations on an arms trade treaty," he added.