UNITED NATIONS Delegates from 120 countries gather Monday for a two-week conference on ways of curbing the illegal trade in small arms, which are thought to kill half a million people a year.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said small arms are "the true weapons of mass destruction" and told reporters this week they should receive as much attention as nuclear weapons.

But he admitted that the document which the conference is to adopt on July 20 "is perhaps not going to be as strong as we would have liked" and would be little more than a recognition "that we need to do something about these weapons."

Critics of the conference say it is perverse to limit discussion to the illicit trade in small arms, since almost all firearms are manufactured legally.

The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), a coalition of NGOs and faith-based societies from 70 countries set up in 1998, estimates that half of all legally sold guns end up on the black market.

The World Council of Churches, one of the 177 nongovernmental organizations accredited to the conference, was quoted by AFP as saying unless it produced legally binding measures and a clear timetable for action, it would be "just talk and no action."

But Jayantha Dhanapala, United Nations undersecretary general for disarmament, said the document would be a political program of action, not a legally binding treaty.

He said 38 countries were expected to send foreign ministers or other cabinet-ranking officials to the conference and 12 would be represented by deputy ministers.

Dhanapala identified six topics as likely to dominate the conference.

They were: Marking and tracing small arms and light weapons; brokering activities; export controls; links between licit and illicit trading; civilian possession; and transfers of weapons to non-state actors, he told reporters.

He said he also expected discussion of a British proposal to establish an international arms surrender fund under UN auspices.

"It is intended to help countries in a post-conflict situation to have former combatants surrender their arms, to be destroyed under ecologically sound conditions," Dhanapala said.

He said it was unclear whether this meant a buyback program, or economic incentives for development like those offered to recover thousands of weapons looted from arsenals in Albania in February 1997.

But Dhanapala emphasized that "we are not looking at domestic gun control as far as crime prevention is concerned."

It was necessary to stress the point, he told a news conference on Thursday, because the United Nations had received about 100 "irate and strongly worded protests" from gun-rights activists in the United States alleging that the world body wanted to deny their constitutional right to carry arms.

Another NGO, the British-American Security Information Council (BASIC), wants delegates to agree to negotiate by 2003 an international convention to ban illegal shipments of arms by air.

In March, during the third and final preparatory session of the conference, BASIC showed a video interview with a British pilot who said he had been offered 100,000 dollars per trip to make illegal flights for UNITA rebels in Angola, in violation of UN sanctions.

Another idea which is likely to be discussed is obligatory third party liability insurance for gun owners, similar to that imposed on car owners, to make the owner of a gun responsible for any illegal uses of it.

The idea has the backing of an eminent persons group (EPG) including former French prime minister Michel Rocard and former U.S. defense secretary Robert MacNamara, which has also recommended that weapons traffickers be tried by an international tribunal.