First, let me point out that I'm not a lawyer, so if in a legal discussion I get it wrong, I apologize. But as our lawyers have explained it to me, by putting this text in the preamble...the preamble starts to give a defining character to the whole text. Once you get past the preamble of a treaty and you go into the text, you're starting to go into the details.
The initial text sets out definitional criteria for what is being done here. We are going to be watching carefully the details of the text to ensure that the details are consistent with what we've said. But should there ever be any doubt, should there be any ambiguity, we would be able to go back to the preamble text and say, “Look, we have said...”. We have two text preambles. The first text says that the purpose of this treaty is to target terrorists, criminals, and human rights violators. The second text says that the purpose of this treaty is not to impact legitimate, responsible firearms owners.
When we go to the details of the text, should there be any confusion about that or some ambiguity and we need somewhere to be able to define what we can do, we can go back to the text in the preamble and say, look, just in case there was any doubt, here it is. I'll give you a specific example. In the discussions, a number of countries have said we should prevent weapons going to non-state actors. What they really mean by this is that they want to prevent weapons going to the likes of the narco-guerrillas in Colombia or to terrorist groups in the Middle East. That's fine, but if we were to somehow put the words “non-state actors” into the treaty, it could be misinterpreted to mean anyone who is not a government—a company, an individual....
Now, one of the things that we are going to try to do is to say, look, let's not use the words “non-state actors”; let's use the words “illegal armed groups”. That better defines it. But should there be any ambiguity about that, we could then turn around and say to look at the preamble, where we have said these people, not those people. That should clarify it, should there be any ambiguity.