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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jlallen who wrote (162039)	7/18/2001 9:00:16 AM
From: Don Pueblo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

Succinct, and able to be understood by the recipient. A noble effort. But mine is funnier. <G>

To: jlallen who wrote (162039)	7/18/2001 9:14:17 AM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

We MUST leave the UN! Anti-gun Conference Strengthens Draft Document; U.S. Delegates May Take a Walk Lawrence Auster Tuesday, July 17, 2001 The United States delegation to the U.N. conference on small arms reacted in dismay on Monday to a revised Program of Action written by the conference's president, Ambassador Camilo Reyes Rodriguez of Colombia. There had been hope on the American side that the global gun controllers, in seeking to gain American approval of a consensus document, would move closer to the pro-gun rights principles outlined last week by U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton. Instead, according to a source in the U.S. Mission, the head of the American delegation told his fellow U.S. delegates that the revised draft was "a disappointment and a step backward. There is lots of new language which raises lots of diversionary issues and creates new financial obligations. This is bad strategy by President Reyes because we're getting new text at a very late point in the conference." The delegation head, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Donald M. McConnell, said that he wanted the U.S. government to say that the new draft, known as L5, is unacceptable. As the U.S. delegates read through the draft Program of Action line by line, McConnell said that four areas of particular concern to the United States not only were still in the document but had stronger language than before: First, the document still moves in the direction of urging a legally binding instrument. Second, it would still prevent any transfer of weapons to non-state actors such as freedom fighters opposing a tyrannical or genocidal regime. Third, it would move in the direction of a prohibition of private gun ownership. Fourth, it would give gun control groups an institutionalized role within the U.N. The source in the U.S. Mission told NewsMax: "Basically the U.N. is sticking it to us. This new draft is worse than it was as far as the U.S. is concerned. It appears to address the gun possession issue but doesn't. They've added all kinds of language that forces us to go through the document eliminating the offensive stuff line by line." The hardening of views in the U.S. delegation was re-enforced by Congressman Bob Barr's press conference in which he denounced the new draft and remarked that "intruding in our domestic policy is not the way to get U.S. funding for the U.N." McConnell said he couldn't understand the motivation of the U.N. in strengthening rather than weakening the global gun control measures, since "if they wanted the United States on board, this was not the way to achieve it." Other delegates suggested the motive may be to isolate the U.S. rather than to pass a consensus document. Some delegates wanted to demand a vote on the Program of Action in the conference. Other members of the delegation resisted this idea, saying that this is not done with consensus documents. The first group replied that forcing the member nations to vote against the U.S. position would clarify the issues at stake. Even more dramatic scenarios have appeared. NewsMax reported last week that a wholesale abandonment of the conference by the U.S. delegation was only a theoretical possibility. The "in your face" revised draft has changed that. Now some U.S. delegates are urging that the United States simply walk away from the conference and deprive of it of any legitimacy. "They're calculating that the U.S. will be too embarrassed to walk away from it," the source told NewsMax. "I think Barr is putting pressure on the White House to walk away. We have to buck up the White House to walk away, because it's absolutely outrageous." Which raises an interesting point. A NewsMax reader recently sent this writer an e-mail that said: "Your article is a good example of why we should pull out of the U.N. I am positive that if we did, the U.N. would collapse very quickly." If, as some delegates are now saying, it makes sense for the U.S. to pull out of the anti-gun conference in order to undermine its naked grab for global governance, isn't it time to think about doing the same thing to the U.N. as a whole? * * * Lawrence Auster can be reached at Lawrence.auster@att.net. newsmax.com