OTTAWA—The Arms Trade Treaty won’t mean an immediate end to controversial arms deals like Canada’s $15 billion sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, says the United Nations disarmament chief.
Kim Won-soo, the U.N. High Representative on Disarmament Affairs, offered that assessment in an exclusive interview following his April 3 meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion.
Kim stressed he was not taking any position on the controversy that has seen a coalition of peace and human rights organizations pressing the Liberal government to cancel the sale of the LAV3s to Saudi Arabia because of the country’s poor human rights record.
The Liberals are honouring the deal, agreed to by the previous Conservative government in February 2014, because they say they have no legal basis to cancel it, and doing so would harm the country’s international trading reputation.
Kim made clear he didn’t want to discuss the controversy, saying he hadn’t waded into the details of it.
