Technology Monitor Opened to Ex-Soviets : Exports: Ties to COCOM will give the new nations access to once-forbidden know-how from the West.

The 17-nation committee that served as a Cold War sentinel against the export of advanced Western technology to the Soviet Union and its allies has agreed to accept Russia and the other Soviet successor nations as associate members, clearing the way for them to buy previously forbidden goods, the Bush Administration said Tuesday.

The decision by the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls, known as COCOM, is another of the once unthinkable but now increasingly common developments stemming from the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

In addition to easing the rules governing technology exports to the former Soviet republics, the action also brings Russia under the COCOM tent, presumably imposing new restrictions on Russian arms sales. Former Pentagon official Richard Perle said the objective seems to be to “find some institutional framework for the control of sensitive technology going to undesirable places like Libya, Iraq, Syria and North Korea.”

COCOM representatives, meeting Monday in Paris, specifically authorized the former Soviet republics to acquire fiber-optics telecommunications equipment to upgrade their antiquated telephone systems. Although the new association probably will permit the eventual export of even more advanced technology, all sales will require case-by-case approval.

“The republics of the former Soviet Union are . . . on a path toward democratic reform and economic integration with the West,” State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said, and the new association reflects the new post-Cold War “strategic relationship.”

Tutwiler said the relationship will give the former Soviet republics wider access to Western technology, establish procedures to prevent “diversion of these sensitive items to military or other unauthorized users” and assist the republics in establishing their own export controls.

She scoffed at suggestions that the steps will lead to dangerous weapons proliferation. She said COCOM restrictions still will govern sales of advanced military technology to the former Soviet republics and that a variety of international agreements continue to ban the transfer of nuclear, chemical and rocket weapons.

Nevertheless, the Center for Security Policy, a private association run by Frank Gaffney, a hard-line former Pentagon official, complained that COCOM’s action “put ex-Soviet foxes into the technology chicken coop.” In a written statement, the center said that as a result of the new association, “the intelligence apparatus of the former Soviet Union would be given direct access to highly classified materials and discussions concerning the military applications of newly developed technologies.”

But Perle, Gaffney’s former Pentagon boss and the most outspoken critic of the Soviet Union in the Reagan Administration, said in a telephone interview, “I’m not worried about it.”

Perle said the United States previously opposed the sale of fiber-optics technology, contending that it would become almost impossible to tap into conversations. But he said it is no longer as important to overhear Russian communications.

“This is a major breakthrough,” said Chris Padilla, manager of government operations for AT&T.; “It is the first major set of liberalizations in COCOM rules for the former Soviet Union since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

Padilla said the relaxed regulations will permit his company “to sell equipment to upgrade international communication links between the republics and the West.”

“We certainly hope this is the first step in an evolutionary process,” he said. “Today’s agreement doesn’t solve all the problems. There are still some things that we would like to sell to our customers that we still can’t.”

He said the fiber-optics technology that can be sold to former Soviet republics is about 10 years old, well below the Western technological cutting edge. Nevertheless, it will be a major advance for Russia and its neighbors.