China Reported Seeking Missile Deal With Iran : Arms: Allegation comes only six weeks after Beijing agreed to accord curbing spread of weapons technology.

Only six weeks after it joined an international agreement restricting sales of missile technology, China is still attempting to sell some forms of missile hardware in the Middle East, according to sources familiar with recent intelligence reports.

The sources said that within the past couple of weeks, Chinese officials were found to be negotiating with Iran for possible delivery of guidance systems that can be used for ballistic missiles. U.S. intelligence officials reportedly picked up at least two recent signs that a new transfer of missile technology from China to Iran may be in the works.

The reports threaten to inflame the controversy over Bush Administration policies toward China. In February, Administration officials said the agreement by Beijing to abide by international rules on missile sales amounted to “an important step forward” for U.S. policy. The Administration later used China’s agreement to justify defeating efforts by Congress to impose restrictions on the trade benefits China receives from the United States.

The recent Chinese actions caused several members of the Senate to ask publicly this week if China already is violating the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the 18-nation accord Beijing agreed to honor.

During testimony before the Senate and House intelligence committees on Wednesday, CIA Director Robert M. Gates was asked about recent Chinese activities that might violate the accord. Gates refused to deny such Chinese efforts. Instead, he told the members, “Let me address that in closed session, please.”

Gates later met behind closed doors with the two intelligence committees. It could not be learned what Gates told them about recent Chinese efforts to sell missile technology.

On Tuesday, in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) asked Assistant Secretary of State Richard H. Solomon whether, since joining the pact, China had either signed any new contracts for delivery of missile technology or canceled any of the contracts it previously had signed.

Solomon, too, refused to answer the questions in public, saying the information was classified. But he repeatedly avoided saying that China has stopped selling missile technology. “It is a process of trying to turn the spigot off,” he told the committee.

“Is the spigot turned off now?” asked Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.)

“It is being turned off,” Solomon replied.

Solomon said that a team of technical experts from the State Department will meet with Chinese officials later this month to talk about the detailed requirements of the international missile agreement.

Spokesmen for the CIA and the State Department refused to comment Thursday on the reports of new Chinese activities. But a State Department official said that if China were found to be exporting guidance systems to Iran, “we’d be concerned . . . because of questions on whether anyone could really determine who the end-user is.”

The accord, worked out in 1987, covers sale of missiles or technology for missiles that can carry a payload of more than 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) a distance of more than 300 kilometers (180 miles). Under the agreement, whenever a country sells components or equipment that could be used for missiles or for some other purpose, the government must give assurances that the “end-use” will not be for a missile system.

In 1988, China was found to have exported intermediate-range CSS-2 missiles to Saudi Arabia and to be working on a deal to sell its newly developed M-9 missiles to Syria.

Since then, the United States has been trying to persuade China to stop introducing new missiles to the Middle East. Halting Chinese missile sales has been one of the main topics on the agenda for President Bush, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Secretary of State James A. Baker III on their trips to Beijing.

Finally, Baker announced in Beijing last November that he had obtained an “unconditional commitment” by China to abide by the accord, as soon as Washington lifted some curbs on the sale of high-tech items to China that were imposed in retaliation for earlier Chinese sales of missile technology.

It took three more months and a meeting at the United Nations between Bush and Chinese Premier Li Peng for the deal Baker worked out to be completed.