As the U.S. Congress prepares to vote next month on the landmark Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which was agreed on July 14 between the world’s leading powers and Iran, and has been approved by the U.N. Security Council, eminent nuclear non-proliferation experts are mobilising international support for its immediate implementation.

In a joint statement, more than 70 of the world’s leading nuclear non-proliferation specialists outline why the JCPOA “is a strong, long-term, and verifiable agreement that will be a net-plus for international nuclear non-proliferation efforts.”

The non-proliferation specialists’ statement, organised by Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, point out that the July 14 agreement, “ … advances the security interests of the P5+1 nations (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the European Union, their allies and partners in the Middle East, and the international community.”

The joint statement is endorsed by former U.S. nuclear negotiators, former senior U.S. non-proliferation officials, a former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a former member of the U.N. Panel of Experts on Iran, and leading nuclear specialists from the United States and around the globe.

The experts “… urge the leaders of the P5+1 states, the European Union, and Iran to take the steps necessary to ensure timely implementation and rigorous compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”

The statement concludes: “… we believe the JCPOA meets key nonproliferation and security objectives and see no realistic prospect for a better nuclear agreement.”

“This statement … underscores, as President Barack Obama recently noted, the majority of arms control and non-proliferation experts support the P5+1 and Iran nuclear deal,” said the Arms Control Association’s executive director Daryl G. Kimball in a new release on Tuesday.

It said: “The JCPOA will establish long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran’s sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities, many of which will last for 10 years, some for 15 years, some for 25 years, with enhanced IAEA monitoring under Iran’s additional protocol agreement with the IAEA and modified code 3.1 safeguards provisions lasting indefinitely.”

When implemented, eminent nuclear non-proliferation experts say, the JCPOA will establish long-term, verifiable restrictions on Iran’s enrichment facilities and research and development, including advanced centrifuge research and deployment.

“Taken in combination with stringent limitations on Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile, these restrictions ensure that Iran’s capability to produce enough bomb-grade uranium sufficient for one weapon would be extended to approximately 12 months for a decade or more,” they add.

“Moreover,” the experts say in a joint statement, “the JCPOA will effectively eliminate Iran’s ability to produce and separate plutonium for a nuclear weapon for at least 15 years, including by permanently modifying the Arak reactor, Iran’s major potential source for weapons grade plutonium, committing Iran not to reprocess spent fuel, and shipping spent fuel out of the country.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A view of the General Assembly Hall as Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson (shown on screens) addresses the opening of the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The Review Conference is taking place at U.N. headquarters from Apr. 27 to May 22, 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 2015 (IPS)

Against the backdrop of a new Cold War between the United States and Russia, two of the world’s major nuclear powers, the United Nations is once again playing host to a four-week-long international review conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

A primary focus of this year’s conference, which is held every five years, is a proposal for a long outstanding treaty to ban nuclear weapons.“Recognising the deep flaws in the NPT, we see the importance of a strong civil society presence at the 2015 Review Conference.” -- Jackie Cabasso

“Eliminating nuclear weapons is a top priority for the United Nations,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told delegates Monday.

“No other weapon has the potential to inflict such wanton destruction on our world,” said Ban, who has been a relentless advocate of nuclear disarmament.

He described the NPT as the cornerstone of the non-proliferation regime and an essential basis for realising a nuclear-weapon-free world.

Dr. Rebecca Johnson, director of the Acronym Institute and former chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), told IPS: “If we rely solely on the NPT to fulfil nuclear disarmament, we’ll have a lifelong wait, with the ever-present risk of nuclear detonations and catastrophe.

“That’s because the five nuclear-armed states treat the NPT as giving them permission to modernise their arsenals in perpetuity, while other nuclear-armed governments act as if the NPT has nothing to do with them,” she added.

A next-step nuclear ban treaty is being pursued by ICAN’s 400 partner organisations and a growing number of governments in order to fill the legal gap between prohibition and elimination.

Whatever the NPT Review Conference manages to achieve in 2015, said Dr. Johnson, “a universally applicable nuclear ban treaty is clearly on the agenda as the best way forward to accelerate regional and international nuclear disarmament, reinforce the non-proliferation regime and put pressure on all the nuclear-armed governments.”

Expressing disappointment over the current status on nuclear disarmament, the secretary-general pointed out that between 1990 and 2010, the international community took bold steps towards a nuclear weapon-free world.

There were massive reductions in deployed arsenals, he said, and States closed weapons facilities and made impressive moves towards more transparent nuclear doctrines.

“I am deeply concerned that over the last five years this process seems to have stalled. It is especially troubling that recent developments indicate that the trend towards nuclear zero is reversing. Instead of progress towards new arms reduction agreements, we have allegations about destabilising violations of existing agreements,” he declared.

Instead of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty in force or a treaty banning the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons, he said “we see expensive modernisation programmes that will entrench nuclear weapons for decades to come.”

Over the weekend, Peace and Planet Mobilization, a coalition of hundreds of anti-nuclear activists and representatives of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), delivered more than eight million petition signatures at the end of a peace march to the United Nations.

The president of the Conference, Ambassador Taous Feroukhi of Algeria, and the United Nations have received several petitions from civil society organisations (CSOs) calling for the successful conclusion of the current session and negotiations for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

But the proposal is expected to encounter strong opposition from the world’s five major nuclear powers: the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.

According to the coalition, the weekend began with an international conference in New York attended by nearly 700 peace activists; an International Interfaith Religious convocation attended by Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, and Shinto religious leaders; and a rally with over 7,500 peace, justice and environmental activists – including peace walkers from California, Tennessee and New England at Union Square North.

“Recognising the deep flaws in the NPT, we see the importance of a strong civil society presence at the 2015 Review Conference, with a clarion call for negotiations to begin immediately on the elimination of nuclear weapons,” said Jackie Cabasso of the Western States Legal Foundation.

“We also recognised that a multitude of planetary problems stem from the same causes. So, we brought together a broad coalition of peace, environmental, and economic justice advocates to build political will towards our common goals”, she said.

Joseph Gerson of the American Friends Service Committee said people from New York to Okinawa, Mexico to Bethlehem “picked up on our ‘Global Peace Wave,’ with actions in 24 countries to build pressure on their governments to press for the beginning of ‘good faith’ negotiations for the elimination of the world’s nuclear weapons.”

The Washington-based Arms Control Association said rather than the dozens of nuclear-armed states that were forecast before the NPT entered into force in 1970, only four additional countries (India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea, all of which have not signed the NPT) have nuclear weapons today, and the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons has grown stronger.

The 2015 NPT Review Conference provides an important opportunity for the treaty’s members to adopt a balanced, forward-looking action plan: improve nuclear safeguards, guard against treaty withdrawal, accelerate progress on disarmament, and address regional nuclear proliferation challenges, the Association said.

However, the 2015 conference will likely reveal tensions regarding the implementation of some of the 65 key commitments in the action plan agreed to at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, it warned.

“There is widespread frustration with the slow pace of achieving the nuclear disarmament goals of Article VI of the NPT and the lack of agreement among NPT parties on how best to advance nuclear disarmament.”

Though the United States and Russia are implementing the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) accord, they have not started talks on further nuclear reductions.

“Russia’s annexation of Ukraine will likely be criticized by some states as a violation of security commitments made in 1994 when Kiev joined the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state,” the Association said.

At the same time, most nuclear-weapon states–inside and outside the NPT–are modernising their nuclear arsenals.

This is leading some non-nuclear-weapon states to call for the negotiation of a nuclear weapons ban even without the participation of the nuclear-weapon states; while others are pushing for a renewed dedication to key disarmament commitments made at the 2010 NPT Review Conference, the Association argued.

Ban said the next few weeks “will be challenging as you seek to advance our shared ambition to remove the dangers posed by nuclear weapons”.

This is a historic imperative of our time, he said. “I call on you to act with urgency to fulfill the responsibilities entrusted to you by the peoples of the world who seek a more secure future for all,” he declared.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

The administration of President Barack Obama appears to have succeeded in preventing Congress from enacting new sanctions against Iran before the next round of nuclear-related talks between the U.S. and other great powers and Tehran scheduled for Geneva Nov. 20.

As a result, optimism that at least an interim deal may soon be achieved between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) appears once again on the rise here, amidst rumours circulating late Friday that Secretary of State John Kerry himself may lead the U.S. delegation.“The purpose of sanctions was to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they have succeeded in doing so." -- Senator Dianne Feinstein

While some senators may still try to attach sanctions amendments to pending legislation – notably the 2014 defence authorisation bill (NDAA) to be taken up next week – most observers on Capitol Hill believe they will be highly unlikely to be voted on before Congress’s two-week Thanksgiving recess, pushing any possible new legislative action against Iran into December.

The administration had been concerned that new sanctions would strengthen hard-liners in Tehran, who would use it as evidence that Obama was either unable or unwilling to strike a deal that would not cross Iran’s “red line” – a refusal to recognise the Islamic Republic’s “right” to enrich uranium within certain limits under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Any strengthening of the hard-liners, it was feared, would force President Hassan Rouhani and his foreign minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, to toughen their terms for a deal, making an agreement with the P5+1 much more difficult to achieve.

Defying pressure from the powerful Israel lobby, several key senators this week indicated they backed delaying action on new or pending sanctions legislation and giving the administration a chance to conclude at least an interim deal that could pave the way to a comprehensive accord on Iran’s nuclear programme within six months to a year.

“I strongly oppose any attempt to increase sanctions against Iran while P5+1 negotiations are ongoing,” said Dianne Feinstein, the influential chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a statement issued Friday.

“The purpose of sanctions was to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and they have succeeded in doing so. Tacking new sanctions onto the defence authorisation bill or any other legislation would not lead to a better deal,” she said, echoing several other colleagues, including the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin. “It would lead to no deal at all.”

The administration had hoped to conclude an interim deal last week in Geneva and negotiated a draft agreement in intensive talks between Kerry, the European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Zarif, according to well-informed sources.

But the last-minute intervention by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who reportedly objected to language regarding Iran’s claims to a right to enrichment, as well as the disposition of its yet-to-be-completed Arak heavy-water reactor, resulted in changes in the draft that Zarif was unable to accept without further consultations in Tehran.

Whether Fabius’s objections – which have been variously attributed to pressure from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is home to France’s only military base in the Gulf, as well as inadequate consultation by Washington in its talks with Tehran – have been overcome remains unclear.

Preventing the Senate from approving new sanctions before next week’s negotiations, however, assumed top priority in its Iran diplomacy this past week.

Faced with an all-out campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to depict virtually any interim deal that fell short of completely dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme as a “historic mistake”, the administration held a series of high-level meetings with senators this week.

The goal was to persuade them that the pending  accord would not only halt Tehran’s nuclear advances, but would actually roll back some of its key elements, effectively lengthening the time it would take Iran to actually build a weapon if it chose to do so.

Obama himself entered the fray Thursday, insisting during a press conference that any easing of existing sanctions as part of an interim deal would be “very modest” and easily reversible if Iran failed to comply with its end of the bargain.

“…(W)hat I’ve said to members of Congress is that if, in fact, we’re serious about trying to resolve this diplomatically — because no matter how good our military is, military options are always messy, they’re always difficult, always have unintended consequences, and in this situation are never complete in terms of making us certain that they don’t then go out and pursue even more vigorously nuclear weapons in the future — if we’re serious about pursuing diplomacy, then there’s no need for us to add new sanctions on top of the sanctions that are already very effective and that brought them to the table in the first place,” Obama said.

Even as Obama was speaking, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with which Tehran had concluded an enhanced inspection plan earlier in the week, released a new report that found that Iran had slowed its nuclear progress since Rouhani took office in June.

Among other things, IAEA inspectors reported that Iran had not installed any new, highly efficient centrifuges at its Natanz and Fordow enrichment facilities; that its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium – considered closest to bomb grade – had increased by only five percent over the past four months; and that work on its Arak reactor had slowed significantly.

While the administration did not react officially to the report, it appeared to further confirm to officials and some on Capitol Hill that, contrary to Netanyahu’s increasingly frequent – and sometimes apocalyptic – warnings, Tehran was indeed serious about reaching an agreement that would significantly curb its nuclear programme.

On Friday, pro-Israel hawks lost a major champion when Republican Sen. John McCain told a BBC interviewer that, though he was sceptical about prospects for a satisfactory agreement, he was “willing to give the administration a couple of months” to reach an accord.

An interim agreement, according to Daryl Kimball, executive director of the well-respected Arms Control Association, is likely to include Iran’s agreement to halt all uranium enrichment to 20 percent levels and convert its existing 20 percent stockpile to oxide or lower enrichment levels.

It would also include a freeze on the introduction or operation of additional centrifuges; measures to reduce the proliferation potential of the Arak reactor, such a freeze on the manufacture of fuel assemblies; and acceptance (although not yet ratification) of a stricter IAEA inspection regime.

In exchange for these measures, the P5+1, he told IPS, may ease the current sanctions regime by releasing some Iranian oil sales-related assets that are frozen in other countries; and waiving certain sanctions on trade in gold or precious metals that were put into effect in July and/or on its auto and aircraft industries.

A final agreement, according to Kimball, would likely require Iran to roll back its overall enrichment capacity and ratify the NPT’s Additional Protocol that provides for enhanced IAEA inspections of actual and suspected nuclear facilities in exchange for the P5+1’s recognition in some form that Iran can conduct limited enrichment and a substantial scaling back of oil and financial sanctions.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.

The United States is debating whether to intervene militarily in Syria. Above, Syrian rebel forces. Credit: FreedomHouse/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Aug 27 2013 (IPS)

While some kind of U.S. military action against Syria in the coming days appears increasingly inevitable, the debate over the why and how of such an attack has grown white hot here.

On one side, hawks, who span the political spectrum, argue that President Barack Obama’s credibility is at stake, especially now that Secretary of State John Kerry has publicly endorsed the case that the government of President Bashar Al-Assad must have been responsible for the alleged chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that was reported to have killed hundreds of people.

Just one year ago, Obama warned that the regime’s use of such weapons would cross a “red line” and constitute a “game-changer” that would force Washington to reassess its policy of not providing direct military aid to rebels and of avoiding military action of its own.

After U.S. intelligence confirmed earlier this year that government forces had on several occasions used limited quantities of chemical weapons against insurgents, the administration said it would begin providing arms to opposition forces, although rebels complain that nothing has yet materialised.

The hawks have further argued that U.S. military action is also necessary to demonstrate that the most deadly use of chemical weapons since the 1988 Halabja massacre by Iraqi forces against the Kurdish population there – a use of which the US. was fully aware but did not denounce at the time – will not go unpunished.

Military action should be “sufficiently large that it would underscore the message that chemical weapons as a weapon of mass destruction simply cannot be used with impunity,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), told reporters in a teleconference Monday. “The audience here is not just the Syrian government.”

While the hawks, whose position is strongly backed by the governments of Britain, France, Gulf Arab kingdoms and Israel, clearly have the wind at their backs, the doves have not given up.

Remembering Iraq

Recalling the mistakes and distortions of U.S. intelligence in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, some argue that the administration is being too hasty in blaming the Syrian government. "The other side, not we, gets to decide when it ends."
-- Eliot Cohen

If it waits until United Nations inspectors, who visited the site of the alleged attack Monday, complete their work, the United States could at least persuade other governments that Washington is not short-circuiting a multilateral process as it did in Iraq.

Many also note that military action could launch an escalation that Washington will not necessarily be able to control, as noted by a prominent neo-conservative hawk, Eliot Cohen, in Monday’s Washington Post.

“Chess players who think one move ahead usually lose; so do presidents who think they can launch a day or two of strikes and then walk away with a win,” wrote Cohen, who served as counsellor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “The other side, not we, gets to decide when it ends.”

“What if [Obama] hurls cruise missiles at a few key targets, and Assad does nothing and says, ‘I’m still winning.’ What do you then?” asked Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), who served for 16 years as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell. “Do you automatically escalate and go up to a no-fly zone and the challenges that entails, and what then if that doesn’t get [Assad’s] attention?

“This is fraught with tar-babiness,” he told IPS in a reference to an African-American folk fable about how Br’er Rabbit becomes stuck to a doll made of tar. “You stick in your hand, and you can’t get it out, so you then you stick in your other hand, and pretty soon you’re all tangled up all this mess – and for what?”

“Certainly there are more vital interests in Iran than in Syria,” he added. “You can’t negotiate with Iran if you start bombing Syria,” he said, a point echoed by the head of the National Iranian American Council, Trita Parsi.

“There is a real opportunity for successful diplomacy on the Iranian nuclear issue, but that opportunity will either be completely spoiled or undermined if the U.S. intervention in Syria puts the U.S. and Iran in direct combat with each other,” he told IPS. Humanitarian concerns and U.S. credibility should also be taken into account when considering intervention, he said.

Remembering Kosovo

Still, the likelihood of military action – almost certainly through the use of airpower since even the most aggressive hawks, such as Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham, have ruled out the commitment of ground troops – is being increasingly taken for granted here.

Lingering questions include whether Washington will first ask the United Nations Security Council to approve military action, despite the strong belief here that Russia, Assad’s most important international supporter and arms supplier, and China would veto such a resolution.

“Every time we bypass the council for fear of a Russian or Chinese veto, we drive a stake into the heart of collective security,” noted Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “Long-term, that’s not in our interest.”

But the hawks, both inside the administration and out, are urging Obama to follow the precedent of NATO’s air campaign in 1999 against Serbia during the Kosovo War. In that case, President Bill Clinton ignored the U.N. and persuaded his NATO allies to endorse military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

The 78-day air war ultimately persuaded Yugoslav President Milosovic to withdraw his troops from most of Kosovo province, but not before NATO forces threatened to deploy ground troops, a threat that the Obama administration would very much like to avoid in the case of Syria.

While the administration is considered most likely to carry out “stand-off” strikes by cruise missiles launched from outside Syria’s territory to avoid its more formidable air-defence system and thus minimise the risk to U.S. pilots, there remains considerable debate as to what should be included in the target list.

Some hawks, including McCain and Graham, have called not only for Washington to bomb Syrian airfields and destroy its fleet of warplanes and helicopter and ballistic capabilities, but also to establish no-fly zones and safe areas for civilians and rebel forces to tilt the balance of power decisively against the Assad government. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, have urged the same.

But others oppose such far-reaching measures, noting that the armed opposition appears increasingly dominated by radical Islamists, some of them affiliated with Al Qaeda, and that the aim of any military intervention should be not only to deter the future use of chemical weapons but also to prod Assad and the more moderate opposition forces into negotiations, as jointly proposed this spring by Moscow and Washington. In their view, any intervention should be more limited so as not to provoke Assad into escalating the conflict.

A B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. Credit: US Army

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Arms control advocates are decrying a new U.S. Department of Defence announcement that it will be building and selling 1,300 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, worth some 641 million dollars.

The munitions at the heart of the sale are technically legal under recently strengthened U.S. regulations aimed at reducing impact on civilian safety, but activists contend that battlefield evidence suggests the weapons actually exceed those regulations.These weapons have not been used by the U.S. in over a decade, so it’s hard to see why it’s in our interest to sell these to Saudi Arabia.” -- Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association

Opponents say the move runs counter to a strengthening push to outlaw the use of cluster bombs around the world while also contradicting recent votes by both the U.S. and Saudi governments critical of the use of these munitions.

“Both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have recently condemned the use of cluster munitions by the government of Syria – that’s ironic given this new sale, because a cluster munition is a cluster munition, no matter what kind it is,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a watchdog group here in Washington, told IPS.

He was referring to the May 15 vote before the U.N. General Assembly in which both the United States and Saudi Arabia joined 105 other countries in strongly condemning Syria’s use of cluster bombs.

“To my knowledge, the sale of cluster munitions by the United States is infrequent today, so this sale is surprising in the sense that this is a very sophisticated, controversial system because these are cluster bombs,” Kimball continues.

“Further, that these weapons are used by Saudi Arabia is questionable from a military standpoint. These weapons have not been used by the U.S. in over a decade, so it’s hard to see why it’s in our interest to sell these to Saudi Arabia.”

Cluster bombs are air-dropped munitions meant to open in mid-air and release hundreds of additional “bomblets”, thus significantly expanding the potential damage inflicted in the attack. Yet for years global sentiment has coalesced against the use of cluster bombs due to the fact that some of the bomblets invariably fail to explode, resulting in lingering danger for civilians long after conflicts end.

As of 2011, 39 countries were dealing with the after-effects of cluster bomb use, according to the U.S. Campaign to Ban Landmines, an advocacy group. The group says that list includes Saudi Arabia.

“Cluster munitions stand out as the weapon that poses the gravest dangers to civilians since antipersonnel mines, which were banned in 1997,” the Campaign states on its website.

“Israel’s massive use of the weapon in Lebanon in August 2006 resulted in more than 200 civilian casualties in the year following the ceasefire and served as the catalyst that propelled governments to secure a legally binding international instrument tackling cluster munitions.”

One percent failure

In 2007, 47 governments endorsed a binding agreement, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, to outlaw the production, use or even transfer of cluster bombs. Some 112 countries have now signed the convention, and 83 have ratified it.

In mid-September, more than 100 countries will meet in Zambia to discuss progress in implementing the accord.

Neither the United States nor Saudi Arabia has signed onto the convention, however, which means that the newly announced sale is legal. According to reports, the U.S. has also continued to make irregular sales of cluster munitions to India, South Korea and Taiwan.

“Cluster munitions have been banned by more than half the world’s nations, so any transfer goes against the international rejection of these weapons,” Sarah Blakemore, director of the Cluster Munition Coalition, a London-based advocacy group, said in a statement.

“We are disappointed with the U.S. decision to export cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, as both countries acknowledge the negative humanitarian impact of these weapons on civilians. The U.S. should acknowledge the treaty’s ban on cluster munition exports and re-evaluate the criteria for its export moratorium so that no cluster munitions are transferred.”

There are currently legislative moves afoot here that would severely limit the scope of potential U.S. sales of cluster bombs, beyond an export ban signed into law in 2009. In mid-July, Senator Diane Feinstein, who introduced a related bill in the Senate in February, co-authored a letter to President Barack Obama urging him to halt the use of cluster munitions with high failure rates.

“Cluster munitions are indiscriminate, unreliable and pose an unacceptable danger to U.S. forces and civilians alike. The U.S. government’s cluster munitions policy is outdated and should be immediately reviewed,” the letter states.

The lawmakers call for an immediate halt of the use of cluster bombs with an unexploded rate higher than one percent, a failure rate that also forms the basis of the current export ban. In fact, that one percent limit will become military policy by 2018, though Feinstein and other lawmakers are hoping to expedite that deadline.

Yet even if the Feinstein bill were to become law, the weapons system being sold by the U.S. to Saudi Arabia, known as the CBU-105, may still be legal. According to both the Defence Department and the weapon’s creator, the Mississippi-based Textron Defense Systems, the system’s failure rate is indeed less than one percent.

Proponents have hoped that this “safer” cluster bomb would be able to continue being used and sold, even in the context of the growing crackdown on these munitions. Indeed, the sales to India, South Korea and Taiwan were reportedly of CBU-105s.

No clean battlefield

Yet the Arms Control Association’s Kimball says there is evidence to suggest that this number is higher. Such evidence comes from the last period in which this model of cluster bomb was used, back in 2003 in Iraq.

“Despite the [public relations] that has been put out regarding the low failure rate of this weapon, in the field its failure rates are much higher,” he says. “This sale to Saudi Arabia should prompt even greater Congressional scrutiny about U.S. cluster munitions policy, particularly the sale of these controversial weapons to other countries.”

Researchers looking at the weapon’s unexploded rate in 2003 in Iraq found that the weapon “clearly does not leave a clean battlefield”.

“The percentage of submunitions which have failed is higher than 1%. Perhaps substantially so,” Rae McGrath, a spokesperson on cluster munitions for the Handicap International Network, stated in a 2008 presentation on findings for this type of weapon.

“At best, these unexploded submunitions would deny access to land for civilian communities until cleared.”

U.S. President Barack Obama chairing the Security Council Summit on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament in 2009. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, Jun 19 2013 (IPS)

Reactions have been mixed to President Barack Obama’s call for greater nuclear arms reductions in the United States and Russia, made during his speech in Berlin on Wednesday.

“We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe,” Obama stated. “We may strike blows against terrorist networks, but if we ignore the instability and intolerance that fuels extremism, our own freedom will eventually be endangered.”

The president addressed about 6,000 invited guests at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, marking 50 years after U.S. President John F. Kennedy made a similar speech at the height of the Cold War."So long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe."
-- President Barack Obama

Obama announced he would push to work with Russia to reduce the number of U.S. and Russian tactical weapons in Europe, as well as the total number of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by both countries.

“To me, the speech today was disappointing,” John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), a New York advocacy group, told IPS. “Obama did not talk about some important multi-lateral opportunities, nor about creating more opportunities.”

Others lauded the president’s call as critical, if belated.

“The Berlin Wall fell more than two decades ago, and these reductions are long overdue,” Lisbeth Gronloud, a senior scientist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group, said Wednesday.

“The president’s initiative implicitly acknowledges that today nuclear weapons are a liability, not an asset,” Gronloud added.

The New START Treaty of 2010 limited U.S. and Russian stockpiles to 800 missiles, bombers and submarine launchers each, as well as 1,550 deployed strategic warheads.

The Obama administration is now proposing cutting each country’s strategic warheads by a third, which would leave the United States and Russia with slightly over 1,000 nuclear weapons each.

“Bipartisan national security leaders agree that further, deeper nuclear reductions would increase U.S. security, lead to budget savings, and help pressure other nuclear-armed states to join the disarmament enterprise,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group Arms Control Association, said Wednesday.

An expensive system

According to the Arms Control Association, the United States spends an estimated 31 billion dollars annually to support its arsenal of deployed strategic nuclear warheads and associated delivery systems.

If the country reduced its deployed strategic warheads to 1,000 or fewer, the group estimates, taxpayers would save some 58 billion dollars over the coming decade.

With terrorist and cyber attacks increasingly prevalent in recent years, analysts have stepped up calls for the U.S. government to re-evaluate whether a massive nuclear arsenal remains the most relevant way of addressing those threats, particularly given the hundreds of billions of dollars in upkeep those arsenals require.

Obama has renewed commitments to the U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which forbids all nuclear test explosions. Ratification of the treaty has already failed once in Congress, however, and the president has set no new deadline for submitting it to the Senate.

Obama has also stated that he plans to hold the fourth meeting of the Nuclear Security Summit, a biennial meeting to prevent nuclear terrorism around the world, in 2016, with the United States hosting the talks.

The administration now hopes to work with NATO allies to come up with concrete proposals for reducing the world’s stockpiles of tactical nuclear weapons, which are not covered by the New START Treaty from 2010.

Russia, which has many more tactical weapons than either the United States or Europe, has been resistant to such reductions in the past.

On Wednesday, Russia’s initial response to Obama’s call for reductions was lukewarm. One senior foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladmir Putin said Moscow wants to “expand the circle of participants” of countries reducing their nuclear arms.

“How can we take seriously this idea about cuts in strategic nuclear potential while the United States is developing its capabilities to intercept Russia’s nuclear potential?” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told reporters in St. Petersburg.

Rehashing statements

In the United States, some civil society voices are suggesting that Obama’s new proposals sound suspiciously repetitive.

“President Obama’s nuclear proposals in Berlin are a tired rehash of U.S. nuclear policy,” said Alice Slater, the director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, a non-profit advocacy group, “designed to maintain America’s global military superiority in a web of alliances entangling other nations in a U.S. sphere of nuclear weapons and missile ‘offenses’ under the ribs of a leaky nuclear umbrella.”

Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have already made it clear that they will push back against any treaty that proposes cuts deeper than those proposed in the 2010 New START Treaty, suggesting that the proposed reductions would hurt U.S. security.

“I do not believe the American people will support the president’s policy, which will serve only to weaken our nuclear deterrent and our ability to deal with threats to our strategic interest in the years to come,” James Inhofe, a conservative senator and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday.

According to LCNP’s Burroughs, if proposed cuts made it into the treaty, it is not certain they would receive the required two-thirds majority in the Senate. However, he said a political understanding between the Obama administration and the Russian government would not actually require congressional approval.

But he also warned of severe objections to proceeding in that direction.

“The steps that Obama was talking about taking with respect to tactical nuclear weapons or the long-range strategic weapons is basically making any U.S. reduction contingent on Russian reciprocity,” Burroughs told IPS.

“I understand the political reasons…but the United States could make reductions on its own and invite Russia to follow – and we’d be perfectly safe.”

Anna MacDonald of Control Arms speaks at the start of the ceremony for the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty at United Nations headquarters in New York, Jun. 3, 2013. Credit: Keith Bedford/INSIDER IMAGES (UNITED STATES)

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations witnessed a historic moment Monday with the signing of the Arms Trade Treaty, first adopted in April by the General Assembly, and the first time the 85-billion-dollar international arms trade has been regulated by a global set of standards.

Negotiations took place between 193 countries, 63 of which signed on Monday. More countries are expected to sign by the end of the week.“We all know about history, so [the U.S. has] a big responsibility." -- Alex Gálvez of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala

The treaty will regulate all transfers of conventional arms and ban the export of arms if they will be used to commit crimes against humanity.

The treaty also calls for greater transparency and for nations to be held more accountable for their weapons trading. States will undergo rigorous assessment before they move arms overseas and have to provide annual reports on international transfers of weapons.

But some of the world’s major arms importers and exporters, whose inclusion is crucial for the treaty’s success, have abstained or declined to give their signatures. Syria, North Korea and Iran were the only three countries to fully oppose the treaty, while Russia, China and India abstained.

The United States, the world’s largest arms exporter, did not sign, but is expected to by the end of the year. Technicalities in the language of the treaty were the reason for not signing; while U.S. support for the treaty is “strong and genuine,” there were inconsistencies in comparison between the English-language and translated versions of the treaty, said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“All other countries are looking to what the United States does,” Kimball added.

Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, said it is “critical” that the United States sign the treaty, which has been “10 years in the making.”

In a statement released by the State Department Monday morning, Secretary John Kerry welcomed the treaty, ensuring that the U.S.’s signing would not infringe on the fiercely debated Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens.

“We look forward to signing [the treaty] as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” Kerry’s statement said.

The treaty is a crucial step towards ending the deaths of the 500,000 people Oxfam estimates perish from armed violence each year.

“The most powerful argument for the [treaty] has always been the call of millions who have suffered armed violence around the world,” Anna Macdonald, head of Arms Control, Oxfam, said in a statement. “Their suffering is the reason we have campaigned for more than a decade,” she added.

When asked if the treaty could prevent atrocities like those which have occurred in Syria, Macdonald said she believed it could, if implemented correctly.

With such vast negotiations taking place, disagreements were bound to arise.

“Items [such as] the scope of weapons covered by the treaty and the strength of human rights provisions preventing arms sales in certain circumstances are not as strong as we would have wished,” Jayantha Dhanapala, president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science & World Affairs and former under secretary general for disarmament affairs, told IPS.

Nevertheless, he believes the treaty is a “long overdue step” in realising Article 26 of the U.N. Charter, which calls for the “establishment of a system for the regulation of armaments”.

And considering the treaty was adopted just weeks ago, 63 signatures is an “excellent number,” Macdonald said.

The treaty will go into force after it receives 50 ratifications from states that have signed. This is expected to take up to two years, but some states, including the United Kingdom, have agreed to already start enforcing the rules of the Treaty.

One victim of gun violence was at the U.N. to witness the signing, the first step on the path to the treaty’s ratification.

Alex Gálvez, 36, was 14 years old when he felt a bullet course through his right shoulder, exiting through his left one. Buying sodas for lunch in Guatemala, Gálvez was caught up in a territorial dispute. The bullet perforated his lungs, but Gálvez said he was too young at the time to realise that he was dying.

Gálvez is now executive director of Transitions Foundation of Guatemala, an organisation that helps Guatemalans living with disabilities, many of whom have been injured by small weapons.

“They left a lot of small weapons without control” after three decades of violence in Guatemala, Gálvez told IPS.

“Unfortunately not everyone had had the opportunity to get treated in time, to get educated [about arms],” Gálvez said. “It’s not just Guatemala that is suffering [from armed violence]; many other countries are suffering too.”

While he received his medical treatment in the United States and understands that it’s a complex process, Gálvez would like to see the country sign, especially as it has provided small arms to many countries, including his own.

“We all know about history, so they have a big responsibility,” Gálvez said.

The Control Arms Coalition demonstrated in front of the United Nations in July 2012 to remind delegates of the price paid every day by armed violence. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Cydney Hargis
WASHINGTON, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Advocacy groups here are stepping up a campaign to pressure President Barack Obama to quickly sign on to a new United Nations treaty aimed at regulating, for the first time, the international small-arms trade.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), adopted by the U.N. in April following on years of preparation, opens for country signature on Monday. It passed with just three “no” votes, coming from Iran, North Korea and Syria, and will require the ratification of 50 countries to come into effect."The issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level." -- Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Center

“The U.S. has said that it feels its export control system is one of the best in the world, and that it would like to see those standards replicated in the ATT,” Clare Da Silva, legal advisor on the ATT with Amnesty International, told IPS.

She says she is confident that the United States will sign on, though it most likely will not be on Monday.

“There is nothing in this treaty that requires the U.S. to do anything differently,” Rachel Stohl, a senior associate at the Stimson Center, a think tank here, said at a panel discussion Friday. “Rather, the issue here is simply the symbolism of saying that [the U.S.] is committed to this on an international level – that’s really important.”

For the first time, the ATT states that if a country knows its weapons will be used to commit genocide or violate a U.N. arms embargo, they cannot be transferred. Stohl believes the ATT has the potential to address some U.S. national security and foreign policy concerns, including terrorism.

A significant majority of U.S. allies, human rights and religious groups have supported the treaty, the passage of which was seen as a key victory for the United States. And while many groups are now calling on President Obama to sign on to the ATT immediately, others are saying he will need to do so no later than the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September.

“If he doesn’t do that, the momentum behind the force will be undermined,” Daryll Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a bipartisan advocacy group here, said Friday.

“U.S. credibility will be questioned, we are going to be pulling the rug out from under our allies, and the president is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

According to both Kimball and Stohl, other countries will be looking to the U.S. to sign on before they make their final decisions. Neither Russia nor China, for instance, has announced whether they will sign the ATT, and analysts suggest that these decisions will hinge on the U.S.’s own moves.

“The U.S. is the largest weapons exporter in the world,” Stohl says. “So people will look and say, well if its okay with the United States, then [signing the ATT] must not be too damaging to legitimate trade.”

Political momentum

The Obama administration has formally supported the ATT, a turnaround from previous U.S. policy under George W. Bush.

Nonetheless, it appears unlikely that the United States will sign the treaty on Jun. 3. Observers say this is due simply to typographical errors in translations from the original English text, however, which are currently being corrected following which countries will have three months to lodge comments.

Even once the Obama administration does sign on, the U.S. Congress will still need to approve the ratification before it can be signed into law. According to Amnesty International’s Da Silva, many international treaties never get ratified, and she does not expect to see the ATT made into law anytime soon.

Indeed, Republican politicians have already moved to pass legislation specifically barring the United States’ ratification of the ATT, while gun-rights advocates here continue to see opposition of the treaty as a primary rallying point. The majority of this opposition has come from the National Rifle Association (NRA), a lobby group.

“The text of the approved treaty is deeply problematic and threatens the rights of privacy of American gun owners,” the NRA says on its website.

In fact, the ATT deals solely with the international arms trade between governments. Nonetheless, this opposition has been so strong that U.S. delegation specifically wrote into the ATT text language that no infringement will occur for recreational, cultural, historical and lawful ownership.

Still, the Stimson Center’s Stohl notes that there remains an important opportunity for the United States to set an example.

“The symbolism is not that there has to be any change to U.S. law,” she told IPS. “Rather, it would be sending a signal to the rest of the world that the United States, which is responsible for 75 percent of the arms trade, is taking on this obligation as the world’s largest [arms] exporter.”

Following a recent legislative defeat of President Obama’s attempts to strengthen domestic gun laws – unrelated to the ATT – Stohl notes that the treaty could be an opportunity for the administration, as well.

“Here’s an opportunity to say, the NRA didn’t like this and we did it anyway,” she says.

Paul O’Brien, an advocate with Oxfam America, a humanitarian group, agrees.

“Do they sign it in a moment when the world is paying attention? We hope so,” he said at Friday’s panel discussion.

“Do they wait until Congress isn’t paying attention and the NRA has probably gone to bed for a couple of weeks? We hope not. We hope they use the moment to continue to build political momentum”.

Four U.S. non-proliferation specialists are urging the Obama administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and issue more explicit threats to destroy its nuclear programme by military means.

In a 155-page report, the specialists, who were joined by the head of a right-wing pro-Israel lobby group, the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), said Washington should declare its intent to institute a “de facto international embargo on all investments in, and trade with” Iran, excepting food and medicine, if it does not freeze its nuclear-related work.

The calls come amidst speculation over a critical meeting between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – plus Germany (P5+1), which have met over the last two months in an apparent effort to unify their positions before meeting with Iran. That meeting has not yet been scheduled, but most observers believe it will take place at the end of the month.

The report, “U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle East,” also said Washington should “increase Iranian isolation, including through regime change in Syria” and “undertake…overt preparations for the use of warplanes and/or missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities with high explosives”.

Only if Tehran provided “meaningful concessions”, among them suspending all uranium enrichment and heavy water-related projects, closing the underground enrichment facility at Fordow, and accepting a highly intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections regime – should sanctions relief be considered, said the report, which was co-authored by FDD’s president, Mark Dubowitz, and David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).

In that respect, the recommendations appeared to reflect more the position held by Israel than that of the Obama administration, which has suggested that it will not necessarily insist on a total suspension of uranium enrichment – a demand that Iran has consistently rejected and which many Iran specialists believe is a deal-killer – as a condition for possible sanctions relief.

“The report does not offer a realistic formula for negotiating a satisfactory agreement on limiting Iran’s nuclear programme,” said Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association (ACA) and a former top State Department analyst on proliferation issues. “It would require Iran to capitulate on virtually all fronts.”

“Some of the measures it suggests would be likely to disrupt P5+1 unity….and the maximalist requirements it cites for an agreement could convince Tehran that the U.S. objective is regime change, rather than full compliance with its obligations to the IAEA,” he noted.

In at least one respect, however, the report departed from Israel’s views. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, warned in September that Tehran could reach what the report called the “critical capability” to quickly build a bomb without detection as early as this spring. The reported concluded that mid-2014 was more likely, although it noted an earlier date was also possible.

“The focal point wasn’t to say, ‘Saddle up, we’re going to war in six months,'” said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies and a co-chair of one of the five task forces that contributed to the report. “This was a more careful assessment of how much time we had, and it allows the sort of (sanctions) pressure, which has been mounting, to have more impact.”

Iranian officials have suggested over the last several months that they are willing to make major concessions, including halting their enrichment of uranium up to 20 percent, transferring a substantial portion of their 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country, and accepting enhanced IAEA inspections, provided they receive major sanctions relief in exchange. But they have also insisted that their right to enrichment of up to five percent is nonnegotiable.

The P5+1 appear divided over how much sanctions relief to offer and in what sequence. Recent reports indicate that Washington and Paris are pressing to require Iran to implement all of these measures, as well as closing Fordow and clearing up all questions raised by the IAEA regarding alleged military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme, before any major easing of sanctions can happen.

The new report, which came out of a series of “roundtables” that included presentations by senior administration officials, clearly favours an even tougher stance.

It explicitly endorsed a letter – reportedly drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to Obama signed by 73 U.S. senators last month that warned, “There should be absolutely no diminution of pressure on the Iranians until the totality of their nuclear problem has been addressed.” The report called for intensified sanctions and more explicit military threats by the administration.

It also called for stepping up covert action against Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes and exerting greater pressure on China, Hong Kong, Turkey, and the Gulf kingdoms to halt all commerce with Iran.

While the report covered other non-proliferation issues in the Middle East and North Africa, it skipped lightly over Israel, the region’s only nuclear power, noting merely that the Jewish state will consider disarmament initiatives only after all its neighbours make peace with it.

The dearth of attention to Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), was described by Thielmann as “conspicuous” given the intended scope of the report.

The report also said Washington should threaten the Islamist-led government in Cairo with tough sanctions if it takes steps to gain nuclear capability.

That the report’s recommendations coincided closely with Israel’s positions may have been due in part to the heavy involvement in the project by staff members from both FDD, which has been a leading proponent of “economic warfare” against Iran, and the Dershowitz Group, a media relations firm with FDD shares office space and reportedly cooperates closely.

Several Dershowitz account executives included in the report’s acknowledgments have previously been associated with Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up by the right-wing, Israel-based Aish HaTorah International, to counter alleged anti-Israel sentiment at U.S. universities. IPS inquiries into the project’s sources of funding went unanswered.

The endorsement by Albright, who is frequently cited by mainstream U.S. media as an expert on the technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme, of the report’s policy-oriented recommendations, such as making a military attack on Iran more credible, came as a surprise to some proliferation experts, including two who participated in the roundtables but asked to remain anonymous because of the off-the-record nature of the proceedings.

“His expertise is a technical one, but this is mostly a political paper,” noted one expert. “This covers areas that go far beyond his expertise.”

U.S. weapons sales around the world have massively expanded over the past year, setting several records. Agreements for foreign arms sales in 2011 totalled around 66.3 billion dollars – three times higher than the previous year and constituting an “extraordinary increase”, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Over that same period, total weapons sales agreements around the world also spiked, nearly doubling to a total of around 85.3 billion dollars, the highest recorded since 2004. These figures were recorded despite the fact that nearly all other weapons suppliers saw declines in orders in 2011.

For instance, the second largest supplier, Russia – with whom the United States has vied for the top spot in recent years – had its sales drop by half in 2011, down to 4.1 billion dollars. Analysts attribute this trend down to the sour global economy.

This discrepancy was undoubtedly created by the United States’ enormous haul, which made up nearly 78 percent of all sales, the most lucrative of which were in aircraft and missiles. Even the report (a leaked version of which can be found here) admits that the “extraordinary total value of U.S. weapons orders” for 2011 “distorts the current picture of the global arms trade market”.

“The astounding, record U.S. foreign military sales figures highlight the fact that the global arms trade is booming,” Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, an advocacy group based here, told IPS.

Washington and the rest of the international community need to do much more “to regulate the flow of weapons to irresponsible regimes with substandard human-rights records and conflict regions like the Middle East and Africa”, Kimball added.

Developing nations: the world’s newest buyers

Half of this year’s record figures consisted of a single sale of 84 fighter jets and several dozen helicopters to Saudi Arabia, valued at 33.4 billion dollars.

This year’s report, an annual, comprehensive look at the subject by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS), focused particularly on arms transfers between the United States and governments in developing countries.

“Developing nations continue to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by weapons suppliers,” the report stated.

Between 2004 and 2011, agreements with developing countries reportedly comprised almost 69 percent of all such agreements, but even this already high number has increased substantially in more recent years, resting at nearly 84 percent in 2011.

While Saudi Arabia was the largest purchaser among developing countries, it was followed by India and the United Arab Emirates, potentially highlighting a clear foreign-policy angle to U.S. weapons sales.

The report noted that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are “pivotal partners in the U.S. effort to contain Iran”, thus suggesting that this year’s record-setting sales could in part be driven by the heated discussion over the potential for war with Iran.

Elsewhere, the report stated that “concerns over the growing strategic threat from Iran…have become the principal basis of [Gulf Cooperation Council] states’ advanced arms purchases”.

Analysts have pointed out that Saudi Arabia’s purchase constituted almost 70 percent of the Saudi government’s total spending for 2011, a move representing an enormous advance in its military prowess.

The push for international regulation

The new figures came just weeks after international negotiators failed to agree on a framework that would strengthen regulation of the global arms marketplace, estimated at some 60 billion dollars annually. Currently, according to advocate groups, extremely lax international accords on the issue make it is far easier to sell weapons internationally than to sell more highly regulated products such as fruit.

Throughout the month of July, representatives met at the United Nations headquarters in New York to try to hammer out an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) but ultimately came up short. The ATT would have aimed at regulating a spectrum of war-related aircraft, along with tanks, missiles and large-calibre weaponry, and small arms.

Early on at those talks, the United States condemned the selection of Iran as the summit’s vice president. Eventually, the United States, pressured in particular by strong opposition from the domestic gun lobby, joined with Russia (as well as India and Indonesia) in objecting to the final draft agreement, thus scuppering progress for the time being.

The Arms Control Association’s Kimball, who attended the New York negotiations, lay much of the blame for that failure on the U.S. hosts, particularly President Barack Obama.

“Although the U.S. delegation had succeeded in inserting all of its preferred formulations in the treaty text and avoided all ‘red lines’, President Obama should have – but did not – provide the leadership necessary to close the deal,” he said.

“Now, the release of these new figures highlights the need for the U.S. to translate its rhetoric into reality regarding an effective Arms Trade Treaty. In the coming weeks, the United States has a special responsibility to work with, not against, the many other states that support the Arms Trade Treaty, to conclude a sound agreement this year.”

Although the July ATT talks ended with no agreement, the negotiations did decide to allow member states to engage in further deliberations and, potentially, to bring a draft treaty before the United Nations General Assembly for a vote.

Unlike the unanimous consensus required during the earlier talks, such a move would only require two-thirds of the body to approve the measure. Diplomats have expressed optimism that such a vote will happen before the end of the year.