Opponents of UN Arms Treaty could derail the saving of millions of lives..

[marmar]

Published on Thursday, September 14, 2006 by the Guardian/UK
Curb this Deadly Trade
Those Who Oppose the Proposed UN Arms Treaty Could Derail a Chance to Save Millions of Lives
by Bianca Jagger

As the UN general assembly opens this week, it has its best opportunity in years to make a life-saving difference to people all over the world. An opportunity to stop human rights abuses, limit the threat of terrorism, and reduce suffering for millions. The opportunity is a draft resolution for an international arms trade treaty that would place tough controls on sales.

The treaty would make it illegal to sell weapons to human rights abusers; make it harder for weapons to end up in the hands of criminals and terrorists; and help regulate a trade that is spiralling out of control - $900bn spent on defence versus only $60bn on aid. Every day over 1,000 people lose their lives through armed violence.

We have seen the appalling consequences recently in the Middle East: the Israeli army flattening civilian targets with precision-guided 1,000lb "bunker-buster" bombs and forcing almost a million people to flee their homes; Hizbullah rockets fired into civilian areas in northern Israel, killing people and forcing others to leave. Both are war crimes, and largely perpetrated with weapons imported from other countries.

Israel's military hardware, including its deadly cluster bombs, is overwhelmingly American-made. And hi-tech British components were used in the Apache helicopters that have fired rockets at cars on crowded streets, and the F-16s that devastated southern Lebanon. For its part, Hizbullah doesn't manufacture the Katyushas or Khaibar-1 missiles it fired indiscriminately into Israel.

Six-year-old Abbas Yusef Shibli picked up a cluster munition while playing with friends because it looked "like a perfume bottle". When it exploded in his hand, he suffered a ruptured colon, a ruptured gall bladder, and a perforated lung.

Nicaragua, my birthplace, is still awash with weapons, the legacy of a bloody conflict - fuelled by the US arming the Contras - in which more than 40,000 civilians were killed. Nicaragua is now one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere.

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0914-20.htm