TerrorismUN includes Iran in drafting treaty aiming to stop arms proliferation to terrorists, rogue states

The UN appoints Iran to group drafting weapon proliferation treaty // Source: haqqyolu.com

The UN has an impressive record of absurd appointments. Here are two examples: last fall, a few months into the brutal suppression by the Syrian government of the Syrian version of the Arab spring, the UN appointed Syria to UNESCO Human Rights Committee. In the face of outrage and incredulity, Syria withdrew its nomination (although it has recently begun to agitate for a reappointment). Also last year, Saudi Arabia was appointment, of all things, to the board of the women’s rights agency UN Women.

The UN this week may have improved on its own record by appointing Iran as vice president of a 15-nation committee tasked with drafting an international treaty aimed at stopping arms proliferation to terrorist groups and rogue states.

Argentina is serving as president of the UN Conference of the Arms Trade Treaty, with the United States, Iran, China, and Russia serving as deputies, or vice presidents.

“Right after a UN Security Council report found Iran guilty of illegally transferring guns and bombs to Syria, which is now murdering thousands of its own people, it defies logic, morality and common sense for the UN to elect this same regime to a global post in the regulation of arms transfers,” UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer told Fox News.

Neuer also said that appointing Iran to the arms trade committee “is like choosing Bernie Madoff to police fraud on the stock market. And the UN’s scandalous choice of Iran is exactly why we fear that Syria’s declared bid for a U.N. Human Rights Council seat is not impossible.”

U.S. critics of the talks say that an international treaty could lead to curbing the Second Amendment rights of Americans. The Bush administraion opposed the UN General Assembly resolution which launched the treaty process in 2006, and refused to join the talks. The Obama administration reversed the Bush position and is backing the conference.

The United States did  not oppose the appointment of Iran, but administration’s officials say the appointment is not that important. “Obviously we oppose [Iran’s appointment], but it’s a symbolic position with little impact on a month-long negotiation that must be decided by consensus,” one senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified because a more formal response was still being prepared, told Fox News. “It will ultimately face the approval of the United States regardless of which country holds one of 14 powerless vice president positions. At that point, we will be looking for an arms trade treaty that makes the legitimate global weapons trade safer by bringing the rest of the world’s arms trade regulations up to the high [current] U.S. standard.”