New UN Arms Treaty in pipeline

The United Nations Disarmament Committee has recommended, by an extremely impressive majority, to begin work on a new treaty to control the lucrative trade in weapons (background here). The Resolution, entitled "Towards an arms trade treaty: establishing common internattional standards for the import, export and transfer of conventional arms" (UN Doc. A/C.1/61/L.55) has the support of most of the major players in the market, both manufacturers and exporters and importers. The draft was approved by 139 votes for, 1 against, and 24 abstentions. Among the abstainers were China, Cuba, Iran, India, Pakistan and Russia; the single vote against came from the United States.