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Thursday, 23 May 2013 2:45 pm
High 14 oC - Low 7 oC 
UN arms talks end without deal: official
UNITED NATIONS - UN negotiations to establish the first international treaty on the conventional arms trade ended without a deal on Friday, the conference president said.
Some countries objected to the final treaty draft, Argentine envoy Roberto Garcia Moritan said. The UN General Assembly will decide whether and when there will be more negotiations.
"The text I proposed was a draft treaty... some delegations did not like it but the overwhelming majority did," said Moritan.
A consensus of all 193 countries involved in the talks must agree on the accord.
The next UN General Assembly meeting takes place in late September.
"We always thought this was going be difficult and that this outcome was a possible one," said Moritan. "We knew from the beginning the diplomatic challenge was going be a big one."
But he predicted that delegates would have a treaty in their hands "soon."
A draft treaty circulated Tuesday was severely criticized 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 Thursday by Moritan was an improvement, according to Amnesty International's senior director for international law and policy Widney Brown.
The text stated that every country must determine whether the arms sold could be used to commit human rights violations or terrorism.
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