Kalashnikov backs weapons control

Mikhail Kalashnikov said he backed UN moves to halt the illicit distribution of small arms.

The Control Arms campaign will hand a petition to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the start of the two-week Small Arms Review Conference.

The campaign's report says there are about 100m AK-47s and variants in use.

It calls for a new international treaty to apply "global principles" to the sale of arms.

'Poorly regulated'

In giving his backing to the Control Arms campaign, Mr Kalashnikov said: "When I watch TV and see small arms of the AK family in the hands of bandits, I keep asking myself: how did those people get hold of them?"

"It is not the designers who must ultimately take responsibility for where guns end up - it is governments who must control their production and export"
Mikhail Kalashnikov

Profile: Mikhail Kalashnikov

The retired general, who invented the rifle in 1945, blamed a "lack of international control over arms sales" for allowing the weapons to fall into the hands of "aggressors, terrorists and all kinds of criminals".

The campaign's report, produced by Amnesty International, Oxfam International and the International Action Network on Small Arms said the AK-47 was the world's most poorly regulated small arms weapon.

It says 82 countries have them in their state arsenal and 14 nations manufacture them. The rifle fires 600 rounds a minute, is reliable and available for as little as $30 in some parts of Africa.

The campaign's petition has one million signatures from 160 countries - representing the number of people killed by guns since the last UN conference on small arms in 2001.

GUN FACTS

• Eight million guns made every year
• 800,000 destroyed annually
• 25% of $4bn annual global small-arms trade is illicit
• Guns used in 60-90% of direct-conflict deaths in 2003
• 6% of suicides and 40% of homicides involve guns