In Brief : West Urged to Cut Export Controls
British politicians called today for a major shake-up of Western export restrictions to the Eastern Bloc and said controls on the sale of high technology should be more flexible.
A House of Commons committee investigating British trade with Eastern Europe released a report urging “an immediate and radical” reduction in the scope of goods that must be vetted for export by the West’s COCOM organization in Paris.
“We want the British government to stimulate COCOM to review all its procedures,” committee chairman Kenneth Warren said.
“If (Eastern bloc) countries cannot get the technology they require to be competitive, it is difficult for us to expect them to pay for exports we want to make to them,” he told a news conference.
The 16-nation Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, which groups all NATO countries (except Iceland) and Japan, is designed to stem the transfer of technology that could directly or indirectly bolster Soviet military strength.
Warren, a Conservative member of Parliament, said it took four years to carry out a routine review of the list of COCOM items, during which time some technology could become outdated.
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