U.S. to Skip Sanctions After China Arms Vow

The Clinton administration agreed Tuesday not to punish China for exporting ballistic missile components to Iran and Pakistan after Beijing promised to end all future technological cooperation with countries trying to develop missile weaponry.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the Chinese promise--if kept--would bring Beijing into “the international nonproliferation mainstream” after years of insisting that it had the right to sell missile parts and some other weapons technology to any country willing to pay for them.

Boucher said the administration had determined that China’s sales to Iran and Pakistan would require sanctions under U.S. law. But he said Washington agreed to waive the regulations to acknowledge the Chinese pledge, which was hammered out during protracted negotiations.

But Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), a longtime critic of President Clinton’s policy of engagement with China, said the administration traded a waiver of U.S. law for a vague promise that may not be kept.

“We are all agreed that winning compliance with the Missile Technology Control Regime is good policy,” Cox said in a telephone interview, referring to an international accord to limit exports of missile technology. But he complained, “The waiver of U.S. law is in exchange for virtually the same promise that [China] made in October 1994 and then violated.”

The deal, announced at about the same time in Washington and Beijing, marked a substantial warming in U.S.-Chinese relations, which were badly damaged when American bombs erroneously hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, during the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war against Yugoslavia last year.

In addition to holding off on mandatory sanctions, Boucher said, the administration agreed to resume consideration of the use of Chinese rockets to launch American-manufactured satellites. U.S.-Chinese cooperation on satellites was suspended after a controversy over charges that in 1996, American companies gave U.S. secrets to China to help the Beijing regime determine why a Chinese rocket exploded during the unsuccessful launch of a U.S. satellite.

“Given the relationship between missile nonproliferation and peaceful space cooperation, the United States will now resume the processing of licenses that are necessary for commercial space cooperation between the U.S. and Chinese companies, such as launching U.S. satellites in China,” Boucher said.

“In consideration of China’s commitment to strengthen its missile-related export control system, we have decided to waive economic sanctions required by U.S. law for past assistance by Chinese entities to missile programs in Pakistan and Iran,” he said.

At the same time, the administration imposed sanctions on the military and space agencies of Pakistan and Iran for receiving the Chinese technology. Boucher said the sanctions prohibit new U.S. government contracts with either government’s military and space programs.

But he added that the restrictions will have very limited economic impact because such transactions are already banned by an existing U.S. embargo against Iran and earlier sanctions against Pakistan in response to its 1998 nuclear tests.

“But they do send a strong signal that the United States opposes these countries’ missile programs,” Boucher said.

A senior State Department official said that if China lives up to its pledge, Iran’s missile development program will certainly be slowed.

He said Tehran is able to build short-range missiles on its own but would need help to produce longer-range rocketry.

Boucher said the administration briefed leaders of Congress before it made the announcement. But Cox, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, disputed that assertion.

“As the only member of the House leadership in town, they didn’t contact me,” he said.

Cox also criticized the timing of the administration’s action.

“The Arms Export Control Act requires the president to give Congress 45 days’ notice,” he said. “By timing the notice, as he has, for the period between Congresses and between administrations, the president has done his best to cut off any response.”