UN arms treaty talks go down to the wire

Geneva - Negotiations were coming down to the wire at the United Nations on Friday to craft a landmark treaty to regulate the $70bn global arms trade.

The talks in New York are due to end at midnight but the world's biggest arms producers have been haggling over the scope of the conventional weapons treaty. The accord must be agreed on by a consensus of all 193 countries involved in the talks.

Expressing concern over the "very limited progress" made during month-long negotiations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Thursday urged member states to "show flexibility and work in good faith towards bridging their differences".

A draft treaty circulated on Tuesday was severely criticised by rights groups, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, as full of "ambiguities and loopholes", especially in not including ammunition and allowing too much scope for arms transfers that would escape the treaty.

A second draft proposed on Thursday evening by Argentine career diplomat Roberto Moritan, who has presided over the negotiations, is an improvement, according to Amnesty International's senior director for law and policy, Widney Brown.

"Some of the significant loopholes that we were concerned about have - if not been closed - definitely been narrowed," she explained to AFP.