How to reduce the number of weapons in the world

Disarmament talks in Mexico eye Obama UN session

By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press
2009-09-05 03:31 AM Fonts Size:

Organizers of an upcoming U.N. conference for nongovernment groups said Friday they will prepare recommendations for a special Security Council session to be led by President Barack Obama on how to reduce the number of weapons in the world.

One of the chief aims of the conference planned for Sept. 9-11 in Mexico City is to press for ways to reduce global military spending of $1.5 trillion a year, or more than $200 for every person in the world.

"This is untenable at a time when 1 billion people struggle to live on $1 or less a day," said Kiyotaka Akasaka, the U.N.'s chief of public information.

Mexican Ambassador Claude Heller, whose nation holds one of the non-permanent seats on the 15-nation Security Council, said recent efforts by Obama and other world leaders have sparked "new momentum on disarmament."

Obama plans to chair the special session on Sept. 24 while the United States holds the council's rotating presidency for September. The summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial session will seek broad consensus on preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

In April, Obama called for a world free of nuclear weapons, but he may lack the votes he needs in the U.S. Senate to ratify a nuclear test ban treaty _ and persuade the rest of the world to rein in nuclear weapon programs.

Sergio Duarte, the U.N.'s high representative for disarmament affairs, said the "new wave of interest in the world in disarmament goals" ranges from eliminating all nuclear weapons to limiting conventional arms. Talk at the U.N. conference also will include the role of U.N. sanctions.

Conference chairman Charles Hitchcock said the recommendations will be forwarded to the Security Council, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon _ who plans to address the conference when it opens _ and the president of the 192-nation General Assembly.

"We're certainly concerned about moving ahead in terms of abolishing nuclear weapons. We're concerned about somehow imposing regulations on the control of small arms," Hitchcock said. "We're concerned about the size of military spending."

But such concerns are being muted somewhat by the global financial crisis, which conference organizers say is keeping people away.

About 1,400 people from 70 nations are expected, including many for the first time from Latin America and the Caribbean. That equals last year's conference in Paris, organizers say, but is down from the 2,000 participants from 90 nations typically attracted over the past six decades.

The U.N.'s main annual event for non-governmental organizations has a different theme each year and formerly was held at U.N. headquarters. Other speakers this year include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jody Williams and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba.

Another arm of the U.N., the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, Switzerland, facilitates negotiations among nations.

At its 65-nation conference last month, China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called for international diplomacy to avert an "arms race in outer space." China and Russia are pushing for a global treaty against space-based weapons amid concerns over U.S. plans for a missile interceptor system.

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