By Judy Aita
Washington File United Nations Correspondent

United Nations -- The first meeting to review progress and exchange information on ending the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons opened at U.N. headquarters July 7, two years after an international conference adopted a plan of action to eliminate the weapons that are responsible for more than 1,000 deaths a day.

The meeting, which will end on July 11, is the first opportunity for nations to discuss what has been implemented in the Program of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons. The program was adopted two years ago at the U.N. Conference on the illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. The program of action identified national, regional and global measures -- such as legislation, stockpile management and destruction, identification and tracing of illicit arms, and international cooperation and public awareness campaigns -- that can be taken by governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental groups.

"It is difficult to overstate the importance of implementation of the program of action," Secretary General Kofi Annan said in a message to the meeting. "After all, small arms and light weapons cause mass destruction. They kill about 60 people an hour or a half a million people a year, 90 percent of them women and children."

"Less quantifiable, but no less palpable, are the wider consequences of small arms proliferation in terms of conflicts fuelled, peacekeepers threatened, aid denied, respect for law undermined, and development stunted," the secretary general said. "They are truly a global scourge."

The U.N. defines small arms as those that can be fired, maintained and transported by one person. Light weapons are ones used by a small crew and transported on a light vehicle or pack animal. There are more then 500 million small arms and light weapons around the world and between 40- and 60 percent of those are illicit, the U.N. estimates. Of the 49 major conflicts fought during the 1990s, small arms were used in 47 of them, causing 4 million deaths.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Lincoln Bloomfield said July 7 that the United States' most significant contribution to the program of action so far has been in the area of destruction assistance programs.

Since early 2001 the United States has supported programs in 10 countries that have destroyed over 400,000 excess illegal small arms or light weapons and 44 million rounds of ammunition. The vast majority of the illicit weapons were not newly manufactured but left over from the Cold War, when large weapons stockpiles were common in many Communist countries, Bloomfield said.

"Our study of this issue has found that so many of these weapons really originated and were stockpiled by the former Communist empire and are far in excess of any legitimate needs of the countries where they now exist," he said. "So it falls to the international community to work together constructively to help these countries in need deal with the burden of these small arms that are hard to secure in large quantities."

"Destruction of these weapons, therefore, represents progress -- it takes them out of circulation for good, where they will never fall into the hands of terrorists, criminals, or warlords, or kill innocent civilians," the assistant secretary said.

Achieving progress in curbing small arms trafficking, Bloomfield said, "will require addressing many factors underlying the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons worldwide. This activity persists because of lax enforcement of laws and regulations or their absence altogether. It occurs because of poor governance and an environment that tolerates illegal commerce, often involving corruption among government officials."

"These are symptoms of a wider pathology undermining stability in parts of the developing world, and until we mount a sufficient collective effort to address the contributing factors comprehensively, we are likely to face challenges from the illicit small arms and light weapons trade," the assistant secretary said.

"We must all work even more energetically to curb the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons," Bloomfield said. "I sincerely hope one key outcome of our endeavors this week will be a redoubled commitment to that task. And you will find the United States ready to engage in very practical ways to reduce the terrible costs being exacted by these illicit weapons of local destruction."

Talking with journalists after his speech, Bloomfield pointed out that the United States has been active both bilaterally and multilaterally, working on regional capacity-building programs as well as weapons destruction. There is strong support in the U.S. Congress for continuing the destruction program and for helping countries improve their export controls, Bloomfield added.

Since July 2001, U.S. assistance programs have included an action plan for curbing illicit arms trafficking for the countries of southern Africa and export control and border security programs in over 30 countries.

"The fact that we are working with countries around the world to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction or the movement of terrorist groups also adds to the focus of controlling borders and controlling illicit activities" in other areas, he said.

"We are making some progress, but clearly there are areas of crisis where small arms and light weapons are illegally exported and re-exported; they're fraudulently sold; they are corruptly imported and they contribute to instability in areas that are beset by crisis."
The United States is "second to none" in the sophistication of its arms transfer licensing, Bloomfield pointed out.

In the last two years the United States has been transforming its own system, in order to make it fully electronic and to join domestic agencies with the State Department and the Pentagon. This is being done to make sure the databases are instantly recallable, and "to make sure that the American people can take satisfaction that whatever these weapons flows are that are flowing into our own hemisphere, or Africa, or the Great Lakes region, or the Balkans, they are not coming from the United States," Bloomfield said.

"We are very interested in talking to countries that produce weapons and export them without a very strong concern about where the weapons are ending up, so that we can urge them to stop exporting them or adopt robust marking, tracing, and export controls such as the United States has," he said.

The United States has been working very closely with a number of countries, including heads of state, urging them to destroy weapons and secure weapons with U.S. help and financial assistance, Bloomfield said. "We are working with countries to bolster their law enforcement capabilities, their export regimes [and] their export control capacity, as are many other governments," he said.

Bloomfield also said that, as was the case at the initial conference two years ago, the United States will discuss only illicit small arms and light weapons, not lawful gun ownership or legal trade and manufacturing of those weapons. "We all have more than enough worthy work to do within the terms of the (illicit small arms and light weapons) mandate. For it is difficult to exaggerate the impact of illicit flows of small arms and light weapons in troubled places."