INTERVIEWER: Okay. So first of all, your --tell me about your experience. You're a lieutenant general --

AXWORTHY: Well, our concern is that the issue of security is now becoming one that is really focused on the individual, that what's happening around the world is that innocent people are being victimized. They're the ones who are being killed, humiliated, violated, and therefore we have to provide a new generation of international laws and practices to protect individuals. Whether it's land mines or small arms, it's the vulnerable that pay the price.

INTERVIEWER: Great. So what do you see is the key issue that the humanitarian concerns, security development --

AXWORTHY: Well, to me there's really three major directions that are connected but that have to be worked on each in their own way.

One is a humanitarian issue, just simply to try to suffocate the number of arms that are awash in the world. That means basically buying them back or, as we have in the case of El Salvador, we have a -- we're working on a project with local businessmen to trade them for food coupons so the people could actually get some real value. So that has to be done.

Secondly, that we need to really control the trade, the illegal trade, that's going on, and that means simply covert, undercover use of arms.

And finally, the toughest one is the legal trade. There's a huge arms trade going around the world. Much of it ends up in the wrong hands; it ends up with the -- you know, drug traders, the terrorists, the paramilitary groups, and they're the ones who then use it to kill the civilians.

So there's really three tracks. They're connected, they're related, but that really means you have to work all the way from the grass roots level to the top international level over the next decade or so.

INTERVIEWER: There -- the Canadians clearly are on the forefront of leading this issue but there's certainly many non like-minded governments that have yet to be brought on board. How do you see Canada's role being to bridge the like-minded governments as well as the -- those that are among the ?

AXWORTHY: Well, like many of these new agendas of human security, there are a new group of activists -- international groups like the Red Cross; there's international NGOs; there's groups of like-minded governments. 

And so what you really have to do is, if you have some common sense of plan of action where you're going, then you work together all the way from the U.N. to the G8s to the various international forums to the direct bilaterals, and over time simply get enough of an agreement together that you can take some action. It doesn't mean you're going to bring all the countries together; there is no such thing as a universal agreement anymore. But, as we saw in the land mines experience, if you establish a convention as a norm, as a standard, those who stand outside of it begin to feel the stigma, they begin to feel the isolation, they begin to feel that they're doing something wrong and therefore over time we think that you begin to affect their behavior and influence what they do.

INTERVIEWER: There's been some controversy whether governments have the primary responsibility to deal with the small arms issue or that role should be the NGOs land mines. How do you feel the role of NGOs and governments complement each other and who has ?

AXWORTHY: Well, ultimately the responsibility for decisions will be governments, and they have to take that responsibility. But they can't take it without the full partnership with NGOs, and that's the experience we had in land mines, that this is a way in which we have to really work together in a combination, but that nobody can do it by themselves. Governments in isolation, governments together, NGOs in isolation -- I think that really has to be a really broad-based coalition and I think it's beginning to happen.

INTERVIEWER: Great. Can you just say a couple words as to the proposed Canadian section on ?

AXWORTHY: Yeah. One of the ideas that we're now looking at is how we could establish an international convention to control the transfer of weapons to non-state activists -- to the terrorist groups, to the paramilitary groups. I think the data shows that that is oftentimes the major source of arms proliferation, small arms proliferation, and therefore if we can get governments committed to taking action to limit the transfer to these new actors, these ones who've caused the conflict, I think we'll take a major step forward.