ACCESSION NUMBER:00000 FILE ID:96032201.ECO DATE:03/22/96 TITLE:22-03-96 HOUSE PANEL ADVANCES BILL REWRITING U.S. EXPORT-CONTROL LAW TEXT: (Similar attempts have failed for years) (890) By Bruce Odessey USIA Staff Writer Washington -- A House of Representatives subcommittee has advanced legislation, achieved with precarious balance, to revise the U.S. export-control system, relaxing some controls and tightening others. The bill was approved March 22 by voice vote in a House International Relations subcommittee, moving it to consideration by the full committee, tentatively March 29. Republicans defeated three amendments offered by the subcommittee's ranking Democrat that would have relaxed controls further. The Clinton administration joined the Republicans in opposing two of the amendments. Still required for the bill to become law are passage by the full House and Senate, a complicated task given the short, crowded election-year legislative calendar. Since the Cold War-era Export Administration Act (EAA) of 1979 expired two years ago, U.S. export controls have been kept in place under emergency law -- by fiat, critics have argued. Attempts by Congress over six years to rewrite the EAA have foundered on squabbles among the State, Defense and Commerce departments and their related oversight committees in the House and Senate. Representative Toby Roth, Republican chairman of the House subcommittee, said he has finally worked out legislation acceptable to the Clinton administration, Republican leaders in Congress and, perhaps most importantly, the House National Security Committee, which scuttled a 1994 bill. He said crafting the bill required nearly weekly meetings for 14 months between his staff and White House staff. "I am confident that we have a bill that will pass muster with the National Security Committee," Roth said. In line with the aims of multilateral non-proliferation regimes, the bill would prohibit exports of any goods used in producing weapons of mass destruction to any country not a member of, or cooperating with, the following regimes: the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group for chemical and biological weapons, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the new Wassenaar Arrangement for advanced technology. The bill also would generally prohibit unilaterally the export of any controlled goods to identified terrorist countries. Reflecting business complaints, however, the bill would impose strict conditions on unilateral U.S. export controls. Such controls would expire after 12 months unless they were adopted multilaterally, incorporated in an embargo, or extended by the president under even stricter conditions. The bill would cut almost by half -- to 90 -- the number of days allowed by the government to make a decision on most export-control license applications. President Clinton already effected similar streamlining changes in December by executive order. In one move toward tightening, the bill would eliminate an existing provision mandating removal of export controls on U.S. products found to be widely available in the global market from non-U.S. suppliers. It would establish a procedure, however, allowing an exporter to petition the federal government to remove a control because of such foreign availability. One of the three defeated proposed amendments offered by ranking Democrat Representative Sam Gejdenson concerned this right to petition. He wanted to authorize petitions not only for foreign availability, but also in conditions when the government could not control sale of the good domestically and when a control placed a U.S. producer at a disadvantage with a foreign competitor. The administration supported this Gejdenson proposal, but Chairman Roth persuaded his Republican colleagues to defeat it, arguing it would cost the support of the National Security Committee needed for the bill. One Republican argued that the proposed language would tempt administration officials to consider such petitions on the basis of politics, not security. The administration opposed two other Gejdenson proposals that were also voted down in the subcommittee although he indicated he might resubmit them for consideration by the full International Relations Committee. One would mandate U.S. import sanctions against countries that violate nuclear proliferation agreements; at present, the government has authority to impose only export sanctions in such cases, to the detriment mostly of U.S. business. "We do have concerns," William Reinsch, under secretary of commerce, said at his first glimpse of the proposal. "This is not an insignificant expansion of sanctions. It's not a small issue -- it's a big issue." Republicans expressed some interest in the proposal, however, if it could be reworded to give the president discretion on imposing sanctions. Gejdenson's other proposal would cap the licensing process at 30 days plus 15 days more for the government to investigate previously unknown foreign buyers. Gejdenson argued that Roth's licensing timetable exceeded shelf life for some rapidly changing technology and complained that the bill lacked a deadline for contentious cases that were escalated to the president for a final decision. Roth argued that Gejdenson's proposal was unnecessary because already 97 percent of license applications are decided in 30 days or fewer. He said the government needs more time to investigate more-complicated cases, especially now that pariah states have begun to use dummy front companies in third countries to purchase proscribed goods. Roth's bill would also reauthorize controls on exports of all kinds of goods in short supply to U.S. industry, not just those used for weapons. And it would continue to prohibit U.S. businesses from complying with foreign boycotts like the Arab League secondary boycott of Israel. NNNN .
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