Ammunition nixed from Arms Trade Treaty draft

The Foundry updates on the UN Arms Trade Treaty talks in New York:

The most consequential change was the more complete removal of ammunition and parts and components from the treaty’s scope. This caused heartburn on the part of the holier-than-thou brigade, led by Norway and New Zealand, and for once they had a point: The revised wording appeared to impose obligations considerably weaker than the U.S. system, which the Administration has vowed to preserve and to use the treaty to advance. But in a forceful but informal intervention—no one else calls the rest of the delegates “folks”—on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador Don Mahley made it crystal clear that the U.S. would not accept the inclusion of ammunition in the formal scope of the treaty and that it had grave reservations about several other aspects of the draft text.