Activists urge UN to limit small arms transfers

UNITED NATIONS, June 26 (Reuters) A UN conference targeting the 1 billion dollar-a-year illicit trade in small arms opened on Monday with a plea by activists for controls on international transfers of lethal weapons like the Kalashnikov assault rifle.

The Control Arms Campaign made the proposal as it presented UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan with a petition backing a new treaty governing such international arms deals. A million people from more than 160 nations signed the petition, symbolizing the number of people killed by guns since the last UN small arms conference in 2001.

The call for a new treaty, while a topic for discussion at the conference, would require the UN General Assembly's approval after it opens its next annual session in September.

It would aim to prevent arms sales to anyone intent on genocide, human rights abuses or UN arms embargo violations.

While many nations favor a treaty, Britain has announced plans to instead seek guidelines on international transfers while the United States has said no agreement is needed.

In opening the two-week meeting, Annan urged the 191 U.N.

member-nations to strengthen their laws governing arms deals and improve their management of national stockpiles, to ensure legal arms are not pilfered to end up on the black market.

He also called for a new accord requiring that the ultimate recipient of weapons in legal arms deals be certified.

''Without such certification, any effort to regulate the trade and brokering in small arms and light weapons will be found lacking,'' he said.

Ahead of the U.N. meeting, the U.S. National Rifle Association, a strong supporter of U.S. President George W.

Bush, warned its members of a July 4 plot to finalize a U.N.

treaty stripping citizens of all nations of the right to own guns -- a charge with no basis in fact.

Americans mistakenly worried about the U.S. Independence Day conspiracy have flooded the United Nations with more than 100,000 letters demanding the nonexistent treaty's defeat.

ANGRY OVER ILLEGAL WEAPONS Annan again reassured the conference that no global gun ban was under consideration.

''Nor do we wish to deny law-abiding citizens their right to bear arms in accordance with their national laws,'' he said ''Our energy, our emphasis and our anger is directed against illegal weapons. Our priorities are effective enforcement, better controls and regulation, safer stockpiling, and weapons collection and destruction.'' With no global accord to regulate sales of weapons like the Kalashnikov, the infamous assault rifle has become ''truly a global commodity, now traded, warehoused and produced in more countries than at any time in their 60-year history,'' said the Control Arms Campaign, a coalition of Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms.

An estimated 70 million are in use in countries ranging from Afghanistan, Britain, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Iraq to Mexico, Sierra Leone, the United States, Venezuela and Yemen, it said.

Favored for its reliability, the Kalashnikov has long been the guerrilla's weapon of choice, able to fire 600 bullets a minute and available in parts of Africa for as little as .

''Of course I feel sad and frustrated when I see armed skirmishes with the use of my weapon also for conduct of predatory wars and for terrorist and criminal purposes,'' said 86-year-old Mikhail Kalashnikov, the rifle's inventor.

''But it is not the designers who must ultimately take responsibility for where guns end up. It is governments who must control their production and export,'' he told the group.

Reuters SK VP0150