Urgent Missive on Missiles : Senators seek to stiffen Administration line toward Beijing

Testifying before Congress last month, CIA Director Robert M. Gates noted recent large arms sales by China to Iran, including missiles and nuclear technology. Particularly worrying, because they can be so destabilizing regionally, have been sales of longer-range missiles and missile technology.

Several weeks after that testimony, a bipartisan group of 17 senators sent a classified letter to Secretary of State James A. Baker III expressing concern over these sales. Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.) subsequently described that concern as “not a matter to be debated in open session, but . . . a matter that has serious implications for our security and that of the world.” These somber words define a deepening worry about the spread of advanced weapons technology and hint at an unresolved conflict between the Bush Administration and Congress.

China, since its brutal crackdown on dissidents in 1989, has been barred from buying such advanced U.S. technology as high-speed computers and satellite parts, both of which have military applications. China wants the sanctions lifted. Washington, in return, wants Beijing to abide by the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime agreement, which is an effort to limit ballistic missile proliferation. Now the two countries are deadlocked over what sales China should curb. The senators’ letter may indicate an apprehension that the Administration is ready to strike too soft a deal.

The senators are right to be alarmed and right to insist on a firm U.S. stance toward China. Iran is only one of a number of countries to which China sells arms that is known to be actively seeking nuclear weapons--and, no less significantly, missile technology to deliver them. Washington’s compelling interest in trying to get China to behave responsibly in this urgent area is a matter of the highest priority.