Copyright 1999 Phoenix Newspapers, Inc.
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC
June 8, 1999 Tuesday, Final Chaser
SECTION: FRONT; Pg. A3
LENGTH: 555 words
HEADLINE: CLINTON MOVES TO EASE RULES ON OVERSEAS SALES OF COMPUTERS
BYLINE: By Peter G. Gosselin, Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
The Clinton administration is preparing to loosen government controls on the
sale of powerful computers to more than 100 countries only two weeks after a
congressional committee charged the administration with carelessly permitting
sales to China.
The Commerce Department has proposed easing restrictions on sales to most
countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe,
administration sources said Monday. In addition, virtually all restrictions are
likely to be lifted on sales to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which
recently became NATO members .
In a move that seems certain to anger U.S. computer makers, however, the
administration will not ease restrictions on China and almost 50 other
countries.
The split decision is a graphic illustration of the powerfully conflicting
impulses that now grip Washington on the subject of exporting American
technological knowhow.
Two weeks ago, a congressional committee headed by Rep. Christopher Cox,
R-Calif., blasted the White House for unwittingly helping China update its
nuclear arsenal by failing to halt suspected spying in U.S. weapons labs and,
perhaps as important, not adequately restricting Chinese purchases of
high-powered U.S.
computers.
"This city wants to have it both ways - to ease
export controls and tighten them at the same time," said Daniel Goure, a leading defense analyst with the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
"It's a natural outgrowth of our being both the last superpower and the world's
leading producer of high technology."
Administration officials said that the White House has yet to settle on how
much to loosen controls on sales to Asia and other regions but that it
generally agrees with industry claims that current restrictions have been
overtaken by technological advances.
The government regulates the overseas sale of computers based on their speed,
which it measures according to how many millions of theoretical operations they
can perform in a second. To sell to the countries for which the administration
is preparing to ease restrictions, computer makers must obtain government
licenses for any machine that can perform more than 10,000 such operations per
second. The industry wants the limit tripled to 30,000.
Administration plans to ease
some export controls are almost certain to be viewed as a slap at the Cox
committee's findings that China has obtained U.S.-made computers powerful
enough to be useful for weapons design and other military purposes.
Although Cox has said in the wake of the panel's report that he still favors
computer sales to emerging nations, including China, the report found that
China acquired some of its advanced computers through third-party nations that
resold American machines, something likely to become more frequent if
restrictions are eased and sales to these nations grow.
If the White House follows through on easing controls, it will be the third
time the administration has taken such a step. A wide array of independent
analysts have argued that the United States has been forced to act because of
the increasing availability of powerful computers from non-U.S. sources. But
Republican critics have
charged that the moves were motivated by a narrow drive to help American
companies capture overseas sales.
LOAD-DATE: June 10, 1999
