May 25, 2000
PRESS BRIEFING BY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SAMUEL BERGER AND NATIONAL ECONOMIC ADVISOR GENE SPERLING
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release May 25, 2000
PRESS BRIEFING BY
NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR SAMUEL BERGER
AND NATIONAL ECONOMIC ADVISOR GENE SPERLING
The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
12:55 P.M. EDT
..................
..................
Q Mr. Berger, you said that one of the topics the President
will bring up with Mr. Putin is leakage of Russian technology to Iran.
Could you describe for us how serious a problem that administration views
that, and what specifically the administration will propose on trying to
stop it?
MR. BERGER: Well, this is something that we've been working with
the Russians on for a number of years. I worked on this with Secretary of
the Security Council Putin three years ago, before his meteoric rise. I
consider that kind of a role model -- National Security Advisor to
President. (Laughter.) Only in terms of the career path. (Laughter.)
So we've been working on this for a long time. There are,
clearly as central control of the Russian economy has broken up, there have
been technology from Russia that has been obtained by Iran as part of their
missile program and as part of their nuclear program. I should say that
Iran's also gotten technology from others as well.
I think the Russians have taken a number of steps over this two-
or three-year period to try to control particularly technology on
proliferation -- leakage on the missile side. They've adopted an export
control law, they have put essentially export control officers in major
entities. We have sanctioned a number of entities of Russia that we
believe were proliferating. The Russians have sanctioned a number of
entities.
So I would say they have made progress, but there's still a
problem. And it's one that obviously we can make more progress on if we
work on together, and this is something that we will talking about.
Q -- recommendations you will bring to the meeting?
MR. BERGER: There were a number of steps that were agreed to
between Minister Koptev, who is the head of the space program in Russia,
and Bob Gallucci, who is our Special Envoy for this -- dean at Georgetown.
And they agreed to an agenda. And a number of the things on the agenda
have actually happened. For example, the adoption of an export law. Some
of the things on the agenda have not happened. I think we've got the
prescription right, but I don't know that we have the implementation
totally in place.
................
Q Do you expect any other agreements besides plutonium
disposition -- agreement you will sign at Moscow summit? There were some
reports that there can be a kind of a deal or at least some rather
important decisions on commercial space launches.
MR. BERGER: Well, I think there will be discussion of space
launches. Just to kind of explain that to your colleagues, we have a quota
on the number of American satellites that can be launched on what is
actually a Lockheed-Russian joint venture in Russia. The quota expires in
December. We have to decide whether we continue it, whether we end it,
whether we extend it. It is related to the non-proliferation issue that I
was asked about before. There are some things that we have agreed with the
Russians that we would do to help plug up the leaks of technology for
Iran's missile program. And so our consideration of a larger quota or
ending the quota is tied to our confidence that they are implementing their
-- not their obligations -- that we are proceeding with strong partnershiop
and cooperation on the non-proliferation side.
................
Thanks.
END 12:50 P.M. EDT
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