Russia-India Rocket Deal Sparks U.S. Sanctions

The Bush Administration imposed commercial sanctions on Russia and India on Monday for proceeding with a $250-million rocket deal that the United States claims could give India an offensive missile capability.

The sanctions, which will ban most high-technology commerce between U.S. companies and the specific Russian and Indian firms involved in the deal, were imposed after Washington tried for more than a year to persuade the two governments to cancel the sale of a Russian rocket to India’s space research program.

The sanctions are mandatory under U.S. law, but they appear to undercut the Administration’s high-priority program of economic assistance to Russia and the other newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union. But because the restrictions apply only to a single company in each country--Glavkosmos in Russia and the Indian Space Research Organization--that may blunt the overall impact on the Russian economy.

The Indian government has maintained that it wants the rocket for peaceful space exploration, but State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the technology also would enable India to build offensive missiles in violation of the international Missile Technology Control Regime.

The regime, similar to the better-known Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, prohibits the sale of rockets capable of sending a warhead weighing about 1,000 pounds on a flight of approximately 200 miles. The international agreement has no enforcement provisions, but under U.S. law, sanctions are required against any companies found to violate the measure. Other nations that have signed the regime have no similar requirement for sanctions.

Boucher said the sanctions ban for two years the export sale of high-technology items to either Glavkosmos or Indian Space Research, any imports to the United States from either company and all U.S. government contracts with either company.

It seems likely that the sanctions will have their greatest impact in preventing the Russian firm--the country’s only high-tech marketing organization--from selling the United States military and scientific equipment left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

A senior State Department official argued that the sanctions will have some impact on the Russian economy as a whole even though they are limited to Glavkosmos. He said the Russian firm “has a list of things that it wants to sell to the West.”

It was not clear whether the Russian government would be permitted to create a new trading company to handle sales to the United States.

Boucher said the Administration will lift the sanctions if the rocket deal is aborted.