Poles to Halt Arms to Iran After Tank Deal, U.S. Says : Military: State Department spokesman declares that delivery of ‘mainly outmoded’ vehicles is unlikely to change Mideast balance.

Poland has agreed to stop selling military equipment to Iran but will honor an existing contract for tanks, starting with a shipment of about 100 Soviet-designed T-72s, Clinton Administration officials said Wednesday.

Although the U.S. government failed to block the tank deal, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the Administration was “pleased by . . . the decision by the Polish government to close out this particular contract . . . and then to refrain from all future sales.”

Burns said the sale involved “mainly outmoded tanks” that are unlikely to change the military balance in the Middle East. Nevertheless, he said, the Administration is determined to oppose all arms sales to Iran as a matter of principle.

“It’s essential to international peace and security to keep arms and advanced technology out of Iran,” Burns said. “We’ve been very vocal about that in recent weeks.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. government imposed a total economic embargo on Iran. But it has been unable so far to persuade other countries to cancel their own business dealings with the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation. The Administration also has failed to block pending sales of nuclear technology to Iran by Russia and China.

But Washington has had a bit more success in dampening arms sales to Tehran. For instance, Russia agreed months ago to suspend conventional arms sales to Iran, although it said that weapons already on order would be delivered. U.S. officials, however, have complained that Moscow has not yet produced a complete list of pending contracts.

Burns said the Polish situation is less complex. The tanks are the only arms covered by an existing contract, he said. The exact size of the sale is not known, he said, but more vehicles will be sent beyond the 100 or so that have just been delivered.

Burns said that Poland’s agreement to forgo more business with Iran, a country that usually pays for goods in hard currency, will be a blow to the Polish economy.

He said the United States will endorse Poland for membership in an international organization to be established to restrict the transfer of military technology to rogue states. The organization, still unnamed, will be a successor to the disbanded CoCom, the Cold War-era agency set up to limit technology sales to the Soviet Union and its allies.

He said nothing, however, about Poland’s application for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the group Warsaw most wants to join.

“I think that the basis of our discussion with them was centered on the principle that Iran is a long-term threat, not only to the United States, but to Poland and all other countries in Europe,” he said.