Photo: Alex Brandon, Associated Press
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FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2011 file photo, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks in Washington. Negotiators at the United Nations are working against a Friday deadline to put final touches on a treaty cracking down on the $60 billion global illicit trade in small arms, a move aimed at curbing violence in some of the most troubled corners of the world. In the United States, gun activists denounce it as an end-run around their constitutional right to bear arms. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) less
FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2011 file photo, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks in Washington. Negotiators at the United Nations are working against a Friday deadline ... more
Photo: Alex Brandon, Associated Press
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FILE - In this April 13, 2012 file photo, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton speaks at the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis. Negotiators at the United Nations are working against a Friday deadline to put final touches on a treaty cracking down on the $60 billion global illicit trade in small arms, a move aimed at curbing violence in some of the most troubled corners of the world. In the United States, gun activists denounce it as an end-run around their constitutional right to bear arms. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File) less
FILE - In this April 13, 2012 file photo, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton speaks at the National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis. Negotiators at the United Nations are working against a Friday ... more
Photo: Michael Conroy, Associated Press

United nations --

Member states failed to reach agreement Friday on a new U.N. treaty to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade, and some diplomats and supporters blamed the United States for triggering the unraveling of the monthlong negotiating conference.

Hopes had been raised that agreement could be reached on a revised treaty text that closed some major loopholes by Friday's deadline for action. But the United States announced Friday morning that it needed more time to consider the proposed treaty - and Russia and China then also asked for more time.

The U.N. General Assembly voted in December 2006 to work toward a treaty regulating the growing arms trade, with the United States casting a "no" vote. In October 2009, the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration's position and supported an assembly resolution to hold four preparatory meetings and a four-week U.N. conference in 2012 to draft an arms trade treaty.

The United States insisted that a treaty had to be approved by the consensus of all 193 U.N. member states.

Ambassador Roberto Garcia Moritan, the conference chairman, said treaty supporters knew "this was going to be difficult to achieve" and there were some delegations that didn't like the draft though "the overwhelming majority in the room did." He added that some countries from the beginning of negotiations had "different views" on a treaty, including Syria, Iran and North Korea.

Despite the failure to reach agreement, Moritan predicted that "we certainly are going to have a treaty in 2012."

He said there are several options for moving forward in the General Assembly that will be considered over the summer, before the world body's new session begins in September.

The estimated $60 billion international arms trade is unregulated, though the United States and other countries have their own rules on exports.

The powerful National Rifle Association has portrayed the treaty as a surrender of gun ownership rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Supporters of a treaty argue it would not affect law-abiding individual gun owners.

Britain has taken the lead in pushing for a treaty to reduce the impact of the illicit arms trade.