High-Tech Sales Strictures Shift to Third World

The battle to keep strategically sensitive technology safely in the hands of the Western democracies is shifting--from Eastern Europe to the Third World.

As the Cold War winds down in Eastern Europe, the United States and its allies have begun to relax prohibitions on Western exports of strategically sensitive materials to the former Soviet Bloc. The barriers are dropping at a dazzling pace.

Earlier this month, the allies agreed on a sweeping overhaul of longstanding restrictions on high-technology goods ranging from computers to machine tools. The changes are intended to ease the way for sales of equipment needed to modernize Eastern Europe.

Just last week, the Commerce Department announced that it will end 40-year-old requirements that U.S. firms obtain export licenses on high-technology goods that they ship to other Western countries--part of the same export-control process.

But the liberalization has focused the international spotlight on a grim reality: With the Soviet threat gradually waning, the big danger that the Western powers face is the increasing possibility that strategically sensitive technology will leak more freely to the Third World.

Dennis Kloske, undersecretary of commerce for export administration, warns that the Western powers must act together to make certain that Third World countries do not exploit the opening up of Eastern Europe to “set up shop in what could become a technology bazaar.”

Such fears are not unfounded. During the years of Soviet domination, trafficking of chemicals, armaments and munitions to Third World countries was a major source of hard currency for Czechoslovakia and other sophisticated East European countries.

The bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, was loaded with Semtex--a plastic explosive made in Czechoslovakia. Vaclav Havel, the country’s new democratic president, admits that Libya now has a 40-year supply in stock.

And it is not just Eastern Europe that may provide the materials. Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore have the technology and capacity to make strategically sensitive equipment, and none of them belongs to any of the international conventions that bar sales to the Third World.

Plainly apprehensive, the major Western governments have begun moving quietly to stem sales of strategically sensitive technology to developing countries--particularly Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria, which so far have been able to purchase such equipment almost at will.

The Paris-based Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (Cocom)--the 17-country compact that has overseen postwar restrictions on East-West trade--is hammering out new accords with Eastern Europe that contain some safeguards on resales to the Third World.

And the United States and its allies have tightened restrictions--at least in principle--on North-South sales of technology and equipment that developing countries might be able to use in producing missiles and chemical weapons.

But officials here acknowledge that the effort has been slow and frustrating. And experts see little hope that the Western governments will be able to strengthen their regulations--or their enforcement activities--enough to deal with the North-South issue satisfactorily.

Analysts concede that the existing enforcement machinery is sketchy. Most governments are reluctant to transform Cocom--which was set up to deal solely with East-West trade--into a North-South agency as well. The agency has enough dissension as it is.

And the machinery for controlling exports of missile technology and chemicals--the eight-country Missile Technology Control Regime and the 20-nation Australia Group--are little more than loose compacts, built around vague declarations of policy.

The response by the Missile Technology Control Regime, for example, has been simply to draw up a list of products that might be useful to would-be missile manufacturers, and to pledge--somewhat generally--to try to tighten controls on who can buy them.

The Australia Group has been more specific, hammering out a list of 50 particularly dangerous chemicals that its members have agreed not to sell to Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Nine of these are so sensitive that they can be sold only to other members of the group.

But, as shown by recent disclosures of West German sales of mustard-gas manufacturing equipment to Libya, enforcement has not always proven satisfactory. The rules “are nowhere near being airtight,” said a congressional arms sales expert.

More ominously, George Rehm, a Washington lawyer who specializes in export-control issues, said the fundamental problem is that, unlike computers, the technologies involved in chemicals, armaments and munitions are so widely held that it is almost impossible to organize all producers.

“The best we could hope for is that the major players who can help developing countries take a quantum leap into this new technology will be willing to discipline themselves,” Rehm said. “We’re never going to stop people entirely.”

Meanwhile, the stakes are becoming higher every day:

* Only last year, Iraq was able to obtain West European and East German help to upgrade its Soviet-built Scud-B missiles to a 380-mile range that could easily threaten the entire Middle East region. It is now working on a follow-up version that is expected to have a range of 550 miles.

* Iran is seeking help from China and North Korea to build a 200-mile missile. And Egypt and Iraq may well acquire missiles with a 500-mile range as a result of their participation in the Condor program, an international defense effort.

* South Korea has successfully converted U.S.-built, two-stage Nike surface-to-air missiles into medium-range surface missiles capable of traveling 110 to 160 miles--far enough to counter any threat from North Korea.

* Sven Kraemer, deputy director of the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based research group, notes that about half a dozen other Third World countries are developing missiles that will enable them to reach well into neighboring countries’ territory. “That leads us to worry about the blackmail threat,” he said.

* Among the countries now capable of producing their own chemical weapons are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, China, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan and possibly Israel and Egypt.

The picture is not entirely bleak. A new report last week by the Congressional Research Service shows that arms sales to the Third World decreased by 24% last year to $29.3 billion--the lowest level since 1983.

The slowdown, which affected Libya, Syria and Iraq as well as other countries, reflects the scaling back of regional conflicts and the heavy debt burdens that have left many of these countries unable to afford arms purchases.

But the report also raised the possibility that the slump in arms sales may be simply a lull, attributable to the fact that many Third World governments are glutted with weaponry they bought in the 1970s and 1980s.

With superpower arms-reduction treaties now in the offing, both the United States and the Soviet Union are looking to Third World governments as potential substitute markets for the weapons churned out by their own defense establishments.

Other big suppliers, such as Brazil and Argentina, have similar expectations.

And even in Eastern Europe’s new democracies, arms sales will continue to be big. Czechoslovakia’s Havel, for example, has asserted that although his country will try to limit new sales, it will honor previous contracts with Third World countries.

Moreover, even a more permanent reduction in Third World arms purchases will not reduce the danger that such weapons as chemicals, missile technology and nuclear explosives could fall into the hands of irresponsible developing countries like Libya.

“Certain countries are a real concern,” acknowledged a U.S. export-control specialist.

The Bush Administration is only beginning to grapple with the problem. U.S. negotiators have been pressing U.S. allies more vigorously to tighten international restrictions on the sale of chemicals, nuclear weapons and high technology to Third World countries.

U.S. officials said that West Germany and Japan both have stiffened their enforcement significantly in recent months, but problems remain.

But whether there will be enough public concern over the issue worldwide to force governments to further tighten their enforcement efforts remains to be seen.

“Intellectually, people realize that the stuff is falling into the hands of the craziest people abroad,” a congressional expert said, “but there just isn’t an emotional awareness yet. As a result, not much is being done.”