Treaties

Russia cemented its ties with Georgia's two breakaway provinces by signing friendship treaties envisaging close economic and military cooperation. President Dmitry Medvedev pledged that Russia would protect Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Russia recognized as independent after its war last month with Georgia. Georgia dismissed the treaties as legally void, saying the regions remain part of Georgia. In Australia, a parliamentary committee recommended that the nation not ratify a treaty that would allow its uranium to be sold to Russia for power generation, partly because of the Russian troop presence in Georgia.

A new United Nations pact to regulate the global weapons trade was cheered by human rights and humanitarian groups, but its power will depend on how stringently it is followed. Like many international agreements, the arms trade treaty does not have a strict system of enforcement. The three countries that opposed it - Iran, North Korea and Syria - will simply not follow it. Other countries may go on to sign and ratify the agreement, yet bend or break its rules. To put it into place, countries will also need to pass national laws to regulate and track weapons exports.

Re "Is There a Torturous Road to Justice?" Commentary, Nov. 8: I'm surprised law professor Alan Dershowitz thinks that extracting information by torture could be legal under U.S. law. He has evidently forgotten that we signed, ratified and executed the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It provides: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability, or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

A groundbreaking pact to regulate the global weapons trade still has a chance of  success after Iran, North Korea and Syria blocked the draft treaty at the United Nations this week.  But even if the treaty passes, its power will hinge on how nations that flout it are held accountable. Under the draft agreement, countries must regulate the flow of weapons and their parts, something that many of them don't do now. Before sending arms abroad, a country would have to weigh whether the weapons could be used to violate human rights or international humanitarian laws, harm women and children, fuel terrorism or cause other kinds of abuses.

Poland's president approved the European Union reform treaty Saturday, ratcheting up the pressure on the Czech Republic as the only nation yet to sign off on the agreement designed to sharpen EU decision-making and increase the bloc's influence. President Lech Kaczynski signed Poland's ratification of the so-called Lisbon Treaty at a ceremony attended by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and other EU leaders. The deal seeks to strengthen the bloc's institutions after its rapid expansion eastward, and must be ratified by all 27 EU nations.

Re "Treaties shouldn't trump U.S. law," Opinion, March 8 Although Julian Ku hopes that the Supreme Court will not require police to refer foreign arrestees to their consulate representatives, the same argument means that Americans arrested abroad will be deprived of a similar right. In 2005, the Bush administration denounced the Vienna convention to which Ku refers, raising a similar question. Perhaps Ku and President Bush should attend another screening of the movie "Midnight Express" to refresh their memories of Americans being arrested by foreign governments and denied competent legal representation.

Jeane Kirkpatrick's article (Editorial Pages, May 25), "Our Faith in Treaties Is Misplaced," displays a shocking ignorance of international law and the problems of dealing with the world community. The McNelly political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune accompanying the article echoes her negativism. It shows a tractor laden with a missile, leaving tread marks repeatedly saying "Blah, blah, blah, blah." The salient point in Kirkpatrick's article is "the greatest difficulty is compliance.

Fifty-seven years after the end of the bloody Korean conflict, always unpredictable North Korea on Monday proposed a peace treaty to formally end the hostilities. The communist state suggested that once a treaty was underway, it would return to the stalled six-party talks to end the regime's nuclear ambitions. But first, North Korean officials say, they want international sanctions imposed last year to be lifted immediately. The proposal was met with skepticism from the U.S. and its allies, including South Korea.

Governments of almost 200 countries have agreed to speed the elimination of a major greenhouse gas that depletes ozone, U.N. and Canadian officials said Saturday, describing a deal they said was a significant step toward fighting global warming.

When I saw the column by Bill Buckley (Opinion, April 1) alleging I used "phony treaties" and "made up facts," I said to myself, I " 'gotcha' again, Bill Buckley." I would have thought after Buckley demanded of me that I cite the treaty as I proceeded to do in the debate on decriminalizing drugs, that he would at least be professional enough to research whether the treaty ever existed before writing that it does not. In fact, I stated on the program that there were several treaties the U.S. was a signatory to. But obviously, his pen is as fast as his lips and he has found it more convenient to attack me rather than research the facts.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry signaled Friday that the Obama administration will take a cautious approach on negotiations that begin next week at the United Nations over a proposed international treaty that aims to more tightly control the $60-billion global trade in conventional arms. U.N. officials and human rights groups have called on the United States to help win support for the treaty, which advocates say could prevent an influx in arms from heightening violence in conflict zones such as Sudan and Syria.

Re "The killing drones on," Opinion, Jan. 10 As Michael Kinsley points out, there are thousands and thousands of pages of legal analysis, treaties, definitions and conventions regarding the rules of war. All of these are internationally accepted. But now, our government is attempting to justify its use of drones in other nations by defining the legal justification for doing so after the fact. That would be akin to an accused murderer drafting laws on homicide after committing the act. We may have the need to use drones, but that need does not give us the right under current international laws and treaties to do so. Jean-Claude Demirdjian Los Angeles ALSO: Letters: Shape up or else Letters: Act now to save the planet Letters: 'Silicon Beach' has enough money

When is Edgar likely to return to his Palmdale home to live out the remaining 25 or so years of his life? Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore. " At least that's what state and federal wildlife officials have told Debby Porter about the future of the black raven named after poet Edgar Allan Poe that she raised by hand at her Antelope Valley home. Wildlife officials say Porter violated the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 by keeping Edgar and 20 other blind or injured crows and ravens in elaborate aviaries inside and behind her house.

Sharp divisions over the future of the Internet were laid bare Friday as the United States and many of its allies spurned a United Nations telecommunications treaty over fears of government meddling with the Web. Getting involved with the Internet would mark a shift for the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency first created to smooth the sending of telegraph messages from one country to another. With information already flowing freely over the Internet, Western countries and companies have questioned why the international agency should get involved.

Paranoia strikes deep. That's the bottom-line explanation for the failure of the U.S. Senate to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But it was more than a generic fear of black helicopters (or black wheelchairs) that impelled 38 Republican senators to disrespect Bob Dole and oppose the treaty, depriving it of the required two-thirds majority. To hear the opponents, the devil in this demonic instrument of world government was in the details. Such as the treay's imaginary attack on home schooling, an obsession for some social conservatives second only to their right to spank their children.

The Senate rejected a United Nations treaty aimed at banning discrimination against individuals with disabilities Tuesday, falling five votes short of the two-thirds needed in a 61-38 vote. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities calls on participating countries to work to attain equality in access to education, healthcare and more, and was based largely on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. It was negotiated by President George W. Bush's administration in 2006 and has since been signed by President Obama.

Representatives of more than 80 nations, meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, to negotiate a treaty to protect the world's wildlife and its habitat, are clashing over language intended to spur conservation but denounced by the United States as an infringement of states' rights. The talks, which began Monday and will continue through next Wednesday, are aimed at producing a biological-diversity treaty that could be signed by world leaders at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro next month.

CAIRO - The Gaza conflict has pressured Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on many fronts: Each rocket Hamas fired into Israel has been a test of Morsi's loyalty. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also been gauging how much damage he can inflict on Hamas before Morsi responds with more than public statements and diplomacy. And the United States and the West, the source of billions of dollars in aid and possible investment that Egypt desperately needs, are watching to see whether the Egyptian president emerges as a formidable and trusted regional voice.

Barry Commoner, a scientist-activist whose ability to identify and explain complex ecological crises and advocate radical solutions made him a pillar of the environmental movement, died of natural causes Sunday in New York City. He was 95. His death was confirmed by his wife, Lisa Feiner. Commoner was a biologist and author whose seminal 1971 book, "The Closing Circle: Man, Nature and Technology," argued for the connectedness of humans and the natural world. It said environmental problems were related to technological advances and had a role in social and economic injustice.