U.N. overwhelmingly approves global arms trade treaty

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the first treaty on the global arms trade, which seeks to regulate the $70 billion business in conventional arms and keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobbying group that has opposed the treaty from the start, said it was a sad day for the United States, which joined the vast majority of U.N. member states by voting for the pact.

Iran, Syria and North Korea cast the sole votes against the treaty. The same three states last week prevented a treaty-drafting conference at U.N. headquarters from reaching the required consensus to adopt the pact.

The official U.N. tally showed 154 votes in favor, three against 23 abstentions, though diplomats and U.N. officials said the actual vote was 155-3-22. They said Angola was recorded as having abstained, though it had attempted to vote yes.

Iran, which is under a U.N. arms embargo over its nuclear program, is eager to ensure its arms imports and exports are not curtailed, while Syria's government is embroiled in a two-year civil war and relies on arms from Russia and Iran, envoys said.

North Korea is also under a U.N. arms embargo due to its nuclear weapons and missile programs.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the vote, saying the treaty "will help to keep warlords, pirates, terrorists, criminals and their like from acquiring deadly arms."

The treaty will be open for signature on June 3 and will enter into force 90 days after the 50th signatory ratifies it. Mexican U.N. Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba told reporters it normally takes two to three years for a treaty to come into force, but said he hoped it would happen sooner in this case.

Major arms producers China and Russia joined Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in abstaining. Although a significant number of countries abstained, putting the treaty to a General Assembly vote was the only way its supporters could get it adopted after the treaty conference collapsed last week.

NRA: 'A SAD, YET TELLING, DAY'

Many of the countries that abstained, among them India, complained the treaty favored exporting over importing states. Russia said Moscow would take a hard look at the treaty before deciding whether to sign it.

Several delegates told Reuters the treaty's effectiveness would be limited if major arms exporters refused to sign it.

The United States, the world's No. 1 arms exporter, voted in favor of the treaty despite fierce opposition from the NRA, whose lobbying wing - the NRA Institute for Legislative Action - issued a statement condemning the U.N. vote.

"This treaty disregards the Second Amendment to our Constitution and threatens individual firearm ownership," said Chris Cox, head of the NRA-ILA. "It is a sad, yet telling, day when the president of the United States and his administration refuse to defend America's Constitution on the world stage."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement the U.N. adopted "a strong, effective and implementable Arms Trade Treaty that can strengthen global security while protecting the sovereign right of states to conduct legitimate arms trade."

"Nothing in this treaty could ever infringe on the rights of American citizens under our domestic law or the Constitution, including the Second Amendment," he added, referring to the U.S. Constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to bear arms.

The NRA has vowed to fight to prevent the treaty's ratification by the U.S. Senate when it reaches Washington.

Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari repeated that his government opposes the arms trade treaty because it does not ban the sale of weapons to non-state actors and "terrorists" like those it says are active in Syria. The civil war there has claimed at least 70,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates.

Syria routinely refers to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad as "terrorists" backed by foreign governments.

The treaty does not ban transfers to armed groups, but says all arms transfers should be subjected to rigorous risk and human rights assessments first.

British Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the vote as a "landmark agreement that will save lives and ease the immense human suffering caused by armed conflict around the world."

SCRUTINY ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Mexico issued a statement on behalf of 98 U.N. member states saying, "an effective implementation of this treaty will make a real difference for the people of the world."

U.N. member states began meeting on March 18 in a final push to end years of discussions and hammer out a binding international treaty to end the lack of regulation over cross-border conventional arms sales.

Arms control activists and rights groups have said a treaty was needed to halt the uncontrolled flow of arms and ammunition that they say fuels wars, atrocities and rights abuses.

The Arms Trade Treaty aims to set standards for all cross-border transfers of conventional weapons. It would also create binding requirements for states to review all cross-border arms contracts to ensure that arms will not be used in human rights abuses, terrorism or violations of humanitarian law.

"The agreement of the Arms Trade Treaty sends a clear message to arms dealers who supply warlords and dictators that their time is up," said Anna Macdonald of the global development group Oxfam.

The main reason the arms trade talks took place at all is that the United States, the world's biggest arms trader, reversed U.S. policy on the issue after President Barack Obama was first elected and decided in 2009 to support a treaty.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao, Stacey Joyce, Todd Eastham and Lisa Shumaker)

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U.N. overwhelmingly approves global arms trade treaty

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday the first-ever treaty on global arms trade that seeks to regulate the $70 billion international business in conventional arms ranging from light weapons to battle tanks and warships.

There were 154 votes in favor, 3 against and 23 abstentions.

Iran, Syria and North Korea last week prevented a treaty-drafting conference at U.N. headquarters from reaching the required consensus to adopt the treaty. That left delegations that support it no choice but to turn to a General Assembly vote to adopt it.

The treaty will be open for signature June 3 and will enter into force 90 days after the 50th signatory ratifies it.

Major arms producers China and Russia joined Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and other countries in abstaining. A number of countries complained that the treaty favors exporting over importing states.

The United States, the world's No. 1 arms exporter, said last week it would vote in favor of the treaty despite opposition from the National Rifle Association, a powerful U.S. pro-gun lobbying group.

The NRA opposes the treaty and has vowed to fight to prevent its ratification by the U.S. Senate when it reaches Washington. The NRA says the treaty would undermine domestic gun-ownership rights, a view the U.S. government rejects.

Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari repeated that his government opposes the arms trade treaty because it does not ban the sale of weapons to non-state actors and "terrorists" like the ones active in Syria, where a two-year-old civil war has claimed at least 70,000 lives, according to U.N. estimates.

Syria routinely refers to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad as "terrorists" supported by foreign governments.

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Philip Barbara)

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As drone monopoly frays, Obama seeks global rules

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, who vastly expanded U.S. drone strikes against terrorism suspects overseas under the cloak of secrecy, is now openly seeking to influence global guidelines for their use as China and other countries pursue their own drone programs.

The United States was the first to use unmanned aircraft fitted with missiles to kill militant suspects in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

But other countries are catching up. China's interest in unmanned aerial vehicles was displayed in November at an air show . According to state-run newspaper Global Times, China had considered conducting its first drone strike to kill a suspect in the 2011 murder of 13 Chinese sailors, but authorities decided they wanted the man alive so they could put him on trial.

"People say what's going to happen when the Chinese and the Russians get this technology? The president is well aware of those concerns and wants to set the standard for the international community on these tools," said Tommy Vietor, until earlier this month a White House spokesman.

As U.S. ground wars end - over in Iraq, drawing to a close in Afghanistan - surgical counterterrorism targeting has become "the new normal," Vietor said.

Amid a debate within the U.S. government, it is not yet clear what new standards governing targeted killings and drone strikes the White House will develop for U.S. operations or propose for global rules of the road.

Obama's new position is not without irony. The White House kept details of drone operations - which remain largely classified - out of public view for years when the U.S. monopoly was airtight.

That stance is just now beginning to change, in part under pressure from growing public and Congressional discomfort with the drone program. U.S. lawmakers have demanded to see White House legal justifications for targeting U.S. citizens abroad, and to know whether Obama thinks he has the authority to use drones to kill Americans on U.S. soil.

On Friday, a three-judge federal appeals court panel unanimously ruled that the CIA gave an inadequate response to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records about drone strikes. The CIA had said it could neither confirm nor deny whether it had drone records because of security concerns.

The judge who wrote the ruling noted that the president had publicly acknowledged that the United States uses drone strikes against al Qaeda.

LETHAL ACTION

Strikes by missile-armed Predator and Reaper drones against terrorism suspects overseas began under former President George W. Bush and were expanded by Obama.

The ramp-up started in 2008, the last year of Bush's term, when there were 35 air strikes in Pakistan, and escalated under Obama to a peak of 117 in 2010, according to The Long War Journal ( http://www.longwarjournal.org/pakistan-strikes.php ).

That jump in use of armed drones resulted from the authorization to use "signature" strikes, which allowed targeting terrorism suspects based on behavior and other characteristics without knowing their actual identity, a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said the administration is committed to explaining to Congress and the public as much as possible about its drone policies, including how decisions to strike are made.

"We are constantly working to refine, clarify, and strengthen the process for considering terrorist targets for lethal action," Hayden said.

The administration recognizes "we are establishing standards other nations may follow," she said.

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said other countries, including Russia, have unarmed reconnaissance drones. China says it has an armed drone, but "we don't know if it works," he said.

"Getting agreement on the applicability of existing humanitarian law to the new technologies is crucial," he said, because China and Russia do not endorse applying laws of armed conflict to new military technologies.

One of the Obama administration's goals is to "regularize" the drone program, making it more a part of accepted U.S. practice in the future, Lewis said. "This is going to be part of warfare."

While the Obama administration moves toward refinement and transparency of standards, drone strikes continue to spark outrage in countries where they are conducted. Washington has sought to portray civilian casualties from drone strikes as minimal, but groups collecting data on these attacks say they have killed hundreds of civilians.

A U.N. human rights investigator who is looking into drone strikes worldwide said on Friday the U.S. campaign had violated Pakistan's sovereignty.

INTERNAL DEBATES

One focus of U.S. officials' internal debate is whether to shift drone operations to the Pentagon from the CIA.

That would allow the CIA to return to more traditional operations of espionage and intelligence analysis, and put the killing of terrorism targets in the hands of the military.

It would probably be a "phased approach" that would account for differences in the threat and political sensitivities, said a second U.S. official. "There would have to be some tailoring."

In Pakistan, where the U.S. military is not in ground combat, the Obama administration would probably not want drone strikes to appear as being conducted by the military.

In Yemen, there may not be the same sensitivities. U.S. military personnel are on the ground working with Yemenis in counterterrorism operations.

The United States has also carried out drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Somalia.

"I think if they moved it, not as a covert action program, but one of the tools of the warfighter, then the result of it is probably going to be more public exposure about what they are doing," Stephen Hadley, national security adviser under Bush, said.

The "center of gravity" in internal administration debates is the goal of greater consistency on how drone strikes are managed, decided upon, and executed, the second official said.

(Editing by Warren Strobel and Mohammad Zargham)

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Middle East is new global travel crossroads

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — It's 1 a.m. and the sprawling airport in this desert city is bustling. Enough languages fill the air to make a United Nations translator's head spin.

Thousands of fliers arrive every hour from China, Australia, India and nearly everywhere else on the planet. Few venture outside the terminal, which spans the length of 24 football fields. They come instead to catch connecting flights to somewhere else.

If it weren't for three ambitious and rapidly expanding government-owned airlines — Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways — they might have never come to the Middle East.

For generations, international fliers have stopped over in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Now, they increasingly switch planes in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, making this region the new crossroads of global travel. The switch is driven by both the airports and airlines, all backed by governments that see aviation as the way to make their countries bigger players in the global economy.

Passengers are won over by their fancy new planes and top-notch service. But the real key to the airlines' incredible growth is geography. Their hubs in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are an eight-hour flight away from two-thirds of the world's population, including a growing middle class in India, China and Southeast Asia that is eager to travel.

In the past five years, the annual number of passengers traveling through Dubai International Airport — home to Emirates — has jumped from 28.8 million to 51 million, a 77 percent increase. The airport now sees more passengers than New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

"Everybody accepts that the balance of global economic power is shifting to the east. The geographic position of the Gulf hubs makes them much more relevant today," says Willie Walsh, CEO of International Airlines Group, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia.

Persian Gulf carriers are already chipping away at some U.S. and European airlines' most lucrative business: long-haul international flights. But it's what's ahead that really has other airlines worried.

Gulf carriers hold one-third of the orders for the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380 — two of the world's largest and farthest-flying jets. That's enough planes to put 70,000 passengers in the air at any given moment.

"They're being very aggressive," says Adam Weissenberg, who heads the travel and hospitality consulting group at Deloitte. "These airlines are not going away."

Modern day air routes can be traced to the post-World War II era when airlines such as Pan Am and British Airways built the first global networks. Flights from New York would cross the Atlantic, stop in Europe's capital cities to refuel and then head on to Africa, India and eventually Asia. Two generations later, those routes mostly remain.

The Gulf carriers are trying to change that. And they have a lot going for them.

Their hubs are in warm climates with little air-travel congestion and cheap, non-union workers. That means runways never shut down because of snow, planes don't circle waiting for their turn to land and flights aren't canceled by labor strikes as they often are in Europe.

"These guys are making the connection as seamless as possible," says John Thomas of L.E.K. Consulting.

Top-paying passengers are given over-the-top service that bolsters the airlines' reputations. On some Emirates planes, first-class passengers get private suites with doors, a 23-inch television, minibar and a phone to call flight attendants. If that's not enough, a "Do Not Disturb" sign can be switched on.

There are spa-like restrooms with heated floors and a shower.

But what really makes these Persian Gulf airlines unique is their focus on direct flights to smaller cities. The hub system they are developing is similar to what U.S. airlines did a generation ago, which allowed passengers to fly from, say, Knoxville, Tenn. to Sacramento, Calif. with just one connection.

"Forget Mumbai and New Delhi. There's another 40 secondary cities in India that I can take advantage of," says Etihad CEO James Hogan.

Airlines and governments in North America and Europe have been fighting back where they can.

In Canada, the government has limited the number of planes that Etihad, Emirates and Qatar can land at its airports. The move protects Air Canada, and its partner Lufthansa, which have a good business flying Canadians to India, Africa and Asia.

Separately, Lufthansa has tried to block the Gulf carriers' access to German airports. Etihad responded by purchasing 29 percent of rival Air Berlin, gaining entry to key European cities. It also owns 40 percent of Air Seychelles and smaller stakes in Virgin Australia and Irish carrier Aer Lingus.

"Working against us or trying to isolate us will not succeed because there is a very clear vision behind these airlines and we will keep on expanding," says Qatar's CEO Akbar Al Baker.

There has been a recent thaw. Emirates struck a 10-year deal with Australian airline Qantas; Etihad partnered with Air France-KLM on some routes; and Qatar is joining a global airline marketing and frequent flier partnership headed up by American Airlines and British Airways.

Still, there is plenty of worry given the size of the Gulf airlines' jet orders and concerns that they are deeply subsidized by their governments.

European airlines have suggested that the Gulf carriers benefit from access to discounted oil, a favorable tax climate and non-union labor, particularly low-wage immigrant workers from India and Pakistan.

But the biggest perk comes from Middle East governments who are investing heavily in attractive, efficient airports.

The Qatari government is building a $15.5 billion airport in Doha, designed to handle 24 million people each year, nearly six times the capacity of the existing facility. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the government is building a sprawling terminal twice the size of The Mall of America.

And construction was just completed in Dubai of a concourse designed exclusively for Emirates' fleet of Airbus A380s. The new building has entire floors dedicated to first and business class customers who board directly from lounges, never interacting with coach passengers.

"Governments here understand the power of connectivity to drive economies," Tony Tyler, CEO of the International Air Transport Association said in a recent speech in Abu Dhabi.

The airlines deny getting special treatment.

Emirates got $10 million in startup cash from the government in 1985. The airline's president, Tim Clark, says his airline has had no assistance since and benefits from economies of scale. The airline reported a net profit of $628 million in its last fiscal year.

"People keep saying we're cheats," he says. "What they can't understand is that something could be as good and profitable as it has been without subsidies. You know why? Because they've all had subsidies themselves and they still can't make it."

Clark says the U.S. government subsidizes airlines by allowing them to wipe out debt in bankruptcy court. All three of the largest U.S. airlines — American, Delta and United — have used the courts in the past decade to restructure.

European airlines stand to lose the most business because of their geography, but that doesn't mean that U.S. carriers aren't watching closely.

The three Gulf airlines already fly to Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington and are adding flights at breakneck pace. The airlines aren't just dipping their toes into these markets; they are diving in, in some cases with giant double-deck Airbus A380s that can seat 489 passengers.

"I think they are a clear threat, much more so to our European and Asian colleagues, but nonetheless a threat to U.S. airlines as well," Jeff Smisek, CEO of United Continental Holdings Inc., said at an investor conference last March. "They have a very good product. And they have the total and absolute support of their governments."

The airlines are not household names yet, but they will be soon, analysts say.

United was a key sponsor of the U.S. Open tennis tournament for more than a decade. But last year, Emirates took over with a seven-year deal reported to have cost $90 million.

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Scott Mayerowitz can be reached at http://twitter.com/GlobeTrotScott.

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