U.N. Treaty to Control Arms Sales Hits Snag

Achieving consensus among all 193 member states of the United Nations is considered a monumental task, but it was hoped that it would be possible in this case because so many countries supported the idea of trying to regulate the $70 billion annual industry at the root of much death and destruction.

The treaty would require states exporting conventional weapons to develop criteria that would link exports to avoiding human rights abuses, terrorism and organized crime. It would also ban shipments if they were deemed harmful to women and children.

After Iran and North Korea voted against the draft treaty, Peter Woolcott, the Australian ambassador who was the president of the treaty conference, suspended the meeting. When it resumed, Syria voted against the treaty as well.

In the absence of consensus, it was expected that the treaty would be sent to the General Assembly as early as next week for approval. That is considered a weaker, but no less binding, manner of getting it passed. After General Assembly passage, the treaty would still require ratification by 50 member states before it could take effect.

“We are certainly disappointed, because we could not achieve the expected result tonight,” said Juan M. Gómez-Robledo, vice minister of multilateral affairs and the head of the Mexican delegation, “but it is only a matter of days, because this conference has shown that the overwhelming majority wish to adopt this text.”

He rejected the three countries’ objections that not enough time or attention had been given to address their concerns, noting that the talks had been going on for seven years.

Most countries who spoke after the treaty stalled said they fully supported it, although some major ones, including India and Russia, voiced strong reservations about some provisions. India said the draft treaty favored exporters. Russia said it should be more specific about banning conventional weapons sales to nonstate actors.

Thomas M. Countryman, the assistant secretary of state who led the American delegation, said that the United States would support the treaty in the General Assembly based on the fact, he said, that the pact would promote global security, advance humanitarian objectives and curb illegal arms sales, all without affecting the constitutional right to bear arms.

Although opposition from Iran, North Korea and Syria had been expected, diplomats and outside proponents of the treaty had hoped the three countries would not block an accord that so many sought. All three belong to the roughly 120-member Nonaligned Movement — Iran is its current president — and the bulk of its members in Africa and Latin American strongly backed the treaty.

But in the end, the three went with their domestic concerns. They are each subject to arms embargoes already, and were concerned that the treaty would add muscle to such blockades.

After the consensus failed, one delegate after another, notably from Africa and Latin America, took to the floor to express disappointment that just three countries had stalled a treaty aimed at curbing violence globally.

Their frustration was echoed by rights groups that have long sought such a treaty. “The world has been held hostage by three states,” said Anna Macdonald, the head of arms control at Oxfam. “We have known all along that the consensus process was deeply flawed, and today we see it is actually dysfunctional.”

In rejecting the treaty, the Iranian ambassador, Mohammad Khazaee, said it left too much in doubt.

“While the rights of arms-exporting states is well preserved in this text,” he said, “the right of importing states to acquire and import arms for their security needs is subject to the discretionary judgment and subjective assessment of the exporting states.”

He said that the measure would leave the sale of conventional weapons covered by the text “highly susceptible to politicization, manipulation and discrimination.”

Iran also took a couple of indirect swipes at the United States and Israel.

First, Mr. Khazaee objected to the fact that the concerns of many states were not met while dedicated language in the treaty’s preamble — meant to mollify the National Rifle Association and other American gun-rights groups — stressed that the use of individual weapons for sporting or similar activities was protected.

Second, Both Iran and Syria suggested that there should have been a specific reference to the rights of states facing occupation to acquire arms, referring to the Palestinians.

Given the civil war in Syria, that country’s ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, also said arms shipments to terrorist groups and nonstate actors should have been banned. But the violence being visited on civilians in Syria by government forces means the treaty, if in effect, could well curb weapons supplies to the Damascus government, which Iran supports as its key Arab ally.