THE director of Amnesty International UK has appealed to the people of west Wiltshire to support the charity's campaign against the worldwide trade in deadly weapons.

Kate Allen spoke at St Margaret's Hall, Bradford on Avon on Wednesday about the Control Arms campaign, launched in partnership with Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms.

Talking to the Wiltshire Times Ms Allen said: "We have joined forces because one person a minute dies as a result of the misuse of arms.

"Our campaign is to establish an international arms trade treaty at United Nations level to target the arms trade worldwide."

She said this backed up Kofi Annan's recent comment that the real weapons of mass destruction are small arms. The Control Arms campaign gained the backing of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on September 30.

"The UK is the second largest exporter of arms internationally and has enormous influence," she said.

"Only last week we saw the murder of Danielle Beccan in Nottingham.

"There is a growing gun culture and it's one that we do need to address. This isn't something that is only happening in faraway places. It's on our doorsteps too.

"The Amnesty group here working with the Oxfam group are two very vibrant groups. They are doing just brilliant work," she said.

As part of the campaign Amnesty International is aiming to for a million people to agree to be "shot" on camera so their faces can be collected together and presented to world leaders at a UN conference on small arms in 2006.

They have already collected the support of 200,000 people and hoped to add another 100 faces on Wednesday.

Ms Allen said she thought an arms treaty would have enormous impact in the UK, as well as in war zones worldwide.