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[EXCERPTS] U.S. Department of State

Daily Press Briefing

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QUESTION: Can I ask you something on something in today's Washington Post? Do you have anything new on the sanctions against Total and Gazprom? And is a waiver in the works?

MR. RUBIN: Let me say that often newspapers, many newspapers, are premature in their declarations of decision-making. Not only has the Secretary not made a decision on the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, she has not even received a recommendation which will have a box that she could check. So any suggestion that it's all but checked box is factually and substantively inaccurate.

I can say that this is a topic that we would expect to be discussed at the meetings in Birmingham and the meetings in London. We have been working intensively with other nations -- particularly with Russia and our European allies - over the past month to carry out the fundamental objectives of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. That is to strengthen the international efforts to constrain Iran's ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction and support terrorism. That is the purpose of the law. We are working closely with the governments there in that regard, and we are hopeful that we can get more and more agreement with other countries of the world to take stiffer and stiffer measures to prevent that.

For example, in the case of Russia, which you might be interested in, Russia has taken a number of actions to strengthen its export control regime. On January 22, the Russian Government issued an executive order, strengthening Russia's export control system, giving the Russian Government broad authority to stop transfers of dual-use goods and services to foreign missile programs.

For those who are still rolling their eyes, today Russia took another step and published regulations for implementing the catch-all authority. These regulations established supervisory bodies in all enterprises dealing with missile or nuclear technologies to ensure compliance with relevant regulations and executive orders. This is the meat and potatoes of nonproliferation and arms control.

These procedures describe exporting enterprises must follow to insure proper controls and outlines -- so-called "red flags" -- which could indicate a proposed purchase is not legitimate. It is also important note that President Yeltsin and other high-level officials have emphasized in the strongest terms the Russian commitment to strict controls on sensitive technologies. I won't go beyond saying that these are useful and positive steps, but we will continue to work with the Russian authorities to assure full implementation of these steps.

QUESTION: I'm sorry; I got so much that I'm almost embarrassed to ask for another comment. But do you have anything on President Yeltsin's recent speech to the foreign office?

MR. RUBIN: President Yeltsin delivered a foreign policy speech May 12 at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And we welcome President Yeltsin's call for tough, uncompromising controls on the transfer of technologies related to weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, as well as his urging the immediate ratification of the START II Treaty.

The United States and Russia have a constructive partnership, which is based on mutually shared interests.

QUESTION: The Los Angeles Times story on the subject didn't say a decision has been taken, but saw the Administration moving in that direction - to look the other way on the gas fields project for those three countries, including Russia. Also, Senator Brownback had very much that impression after testimony by Martin Indyk --

MR. RUBIN: No, it said that he had heard rumors. That's what the article said; I read it very carefully.

QUESTION: All right.

(Laughter.)

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(The briefing concluded at 1:40 P.M.)

[end of document]