PAck OK'd for submitting to UN on 'horror' arms

Negotiators from 72 nations agreed Thursday on the terms of an arms control treaty designed to protect civilians and nonmilitary targets from nonnuclear horror weapons. The treaty, along with three protocols on differing types of "inhumane" conventional weapons, will be opened for signature in six months after endorsement by the UN General Assembly. Among the weapons covered by the agreements are napalm, firebombs, fragmentation weapons, and land mines.

The treaty and protocol represent a partly successful outcome of the UN "conference on excessively injurious conventional weapons" which began last year -- partly successful because the original aim was to ban the use of such arms against combatants in a war as well as civilians.