PRESS CONFERENCE ON SMALL ARMS

It was not enough for the upcoming United Nations Conference on Small Arms and its Preparatory Committee to limit discussion purely to illegal arms transfers, Lloyd Axworthy, Co-Chair of the Global Coalition of non-governmental organizations and Like-minded States on Small Arms told correspondents this morning.

At a Headquarters press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Canada to the United Nations, on behalf of the Eminent Persons Group on Small Arms, he strongly emphasized the need to connect discussions on illegal arms transfers to legal transfers, because they would end up being illegal and falling into the wrong hands.  Accompanying him were Group members Sola Ogunbanwo, a member of Nigeria’s delegation to the Preparatory Committee, and Peggy Mason, Candada’s former Ambassador for Disarmament.  Albrecht Muth Albi, the Group's Executive Director, was also present.

The United Nations Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects will be held at Headquarters in July.  The two-week Preparatory Committee meeting ends on Friday, 30 March.

Mr. Axworthy, a former Foreign Minister of Canada, also stressed the need for a serious commitment to developing a form of politically-binding action.  The time for rhetoric and good intentions was over.  It was a time of testing for Member States, which must decide whether or not they favoured the protection of civilians, he added.

"It's absolutely crucial that the resources be committed to actually work with those countries in which efforts are underway to undertake micro-disarmament, to get rid of the arms and to begin to provide prevention measures", he stressed.  Canada had participated actively in such programmes, especially in West Africa and had found them effective.  But they did not come cheap, he said.

Dr. Ogunbanwo stressed the need to address the links between small arms and diamond trafficking; small arms and child soldiers; and the collection and destruction of accumulated small arms in post-conflict situations, all problems afflicting Africa -- the continent most affected by the illicit small arms trade.  He noted that collection and destruction required heavy funding and called for international support.

Recalling the African ministerial conference on small arms held at Bamako, Mali, late last year, he said the Bamako Declaration was already being used effectively in the Preparatory Committee's search for global action on small arms and light weapons.  Such initiatives in regions affected by small arms would determine what the eventual global mechanism would be, he added.

Ms. Mason, a member of the Canadian delegation to the Preparatory Committee and Chair of the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Small Arms Brokering, reiterated the utility of the Bamako Declaration in the preparatory process, because it dealt quite comprehensively with both effective and proper regulation of the legal arms trade and the means to deal with the illicit trade.

A basically unregulated area of the legal trade was international brokering, she said.  It was very often difficult to determine where the legal side ended and the illegal side began, a point to which Secretary-General Kofi Annan had been among the first to draw attention.  In addition, there had been a number of important Security Council reports on arms embargo violations involving international brokers, she added.

Asked to outline the key elements of the Bamako Declaration, Dr. Ogunbanwo said it urged African States to establish national coordination agencies to deal with all the problems of the small arms trafficking and proliferation.  It also called for international assistance in implementing existing measures, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Moratorium on Small Arms, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Programme of Action on Small Arms and the Horn of Africa and East African Programme of Action on Small Arms.  It was also important to establish border cooperation between police and security forces to combat trafficking.

Ms. Mason noted that a system had been established that looked at export controls, import controls, transit controls, use controls and retransfer controls.  It was well established for major weapons systems but not for small arms and light weapons.  However, an Organization of American States (OAS) treaty concluded in 1998 had such a regime in place that had become the basis of the successful recent completion in Vienna of negotiations on a firearms Protocol, she said.  The big additional element required was strict national criteria for determining when an export should or should not go.

Asked whether the Conference should discuss such domestic issues as the school shooting in California yesterday, Dr. Axworthy said such a discussion would substantially change the debate.  It was hard enough to get agreement, and it would become virtually impossible if the Conference were to look at domestic considerations.  It was important to focus on the achievable, he added.

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