Fifteen Nobel Peace Prize laureates on Tuesday urged UN member states to back a draft resolution aimed at controlling international arms sales.
The draft, co-sponsored by Argentina, Australia, Britain, Costa Rica, Finland, Japan and Kenya, comes to a vote on Wednesday in the UN General Assembly's First Committee, which deals with disarmament.
The Nobel laureates, including the Dalai Lama, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias and Amnesty International, pressed governments to support the treaty in order to stop irresponsible arms exports "which are causing the peoples of the world so much pain and destruction," said the letter released here on Tuesday.
If adopted, the draft would set up a group of governmental experts to look at the feasibility, scope and parameters of an arms-trade treaty and report back to the assembly's first committee in 2008.
Most UN member states have indicated that they are prepared to back the text.
They include three of the top six arms exporters: Britain, France and Germany; several emerging arms exporters such as Brazil, Bulgaria and Ukraine as well as many countries that have been devastated by armed violence including Colombia, East Timor, Haiti, Liberia and Rwanda.
But other key arms exporters such as the United States, Russia, China, India, Iran and Egypt are unlikely to vote in favour.
If adopted, the text would mark the first concrete step toward a global treaty to close current loopholes in regulations that allow conventional weapons to fuel conflict, grave human rights violations and undermine development.
"We Nobel Peace Laureates know that the main principle behind a global Arms Trade Treaty is simple and unstoppable: no weapons should ever be transferred if they will be used for serious violations of human rights," said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
"It is crunch time at the UN: governments should take a historic step to stop irresponsible and immoral arms transfers by voting to develop a treaty that will prevent the death, rape and displacement of thousands of people," she added.
Early this month, a report backed by Amnesty International and Oxfam warned that the globalisation of the arms industry has shed light on the shortcomings of existing legislation to control it.
The report, also supported by the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA) -- an umbrella organisation of 600 NGOs -- outlines how US, European and Canadian companies bypass laws regulating weapons trade by selling arms in detached pieces or by subcontracting their activities to local businesses.
"It is time for all wavering governments to join the moral majority and vote to set up a process to establish a global Arms Trade Treaty," said IANSA director Rebecca Peters.
"The world can no longer leave civilians to the mercy of gunrunners, arms brokers and exporters who are profiting by their misery."