Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre says he is diappointed over the fact that the UN talks aimed at a treaty to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade ended without agreement.
- I am disappointed. The last draft was a proposal which had the support of a great majority, and which would have regulated the global arms trade. We cannot look uon thi as a lost cause. Norway and many other countries will look forward, and utilize what has been achieved in the continuing work to get a treaty in place. A basis has been created which a major group of countries wish to build on within the framework of the UN, Foreign Minister Støre says.
Many countries, including Norway control arms exports but there has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "disappointed" with the failure to reach agreement on a treaty text, and described it as "a setback." He said, however, that he remained committed to working with member states to peruse a "robust" treaty on controlling the conventional arms trade.
(NRK)
