Congress to review Clinton decision to relax export controls

WASHINGTON — Congress appears ready to review a decision that relaxes U.S. controls on advanced computers to China, Russia and several Middle East countries.

The effort is being led by Sen. Fred Thompson, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee. Thompson and other Republicans have objected to the lifting of restrictions on export controls of advanced U.S. computers that can be used for military operations.

In the Middle East, the decision made in January by then-President Bill Clinton would mostly affect Israel, which has for years appealed to the United States for advanced computers. But congressional staffers said Clinton's decision ignored criteria set by a 1998 law that warns of the transfer of dual-use equipment by the United States.

"The president's January 2001 changes in the export control thresholds for high performance computer exports are not adequately justified," Susan Westin, of the General Accounting Office, said. "These computers have both civilian and military [dual-use] applications, and the recent technological advancements in computing power have been rapid."

The GAO is regarded as the investigative agency of Congress. Ms. Westin, who serves as GAO director of international affairs and trade, testified at a Senate hearing on Thursday. Clinton's decision would raise the threshold for permissible computer sales to such countries as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel. The threshold would be raised from the current 28,000 million theoretical operations per second, or MTOPs, to 85,000 million MTOPs.

The GAO has recommended that MTOPs be eliminated as a criteria for export control. Instead, the congressional agency called for a review of computer exports and establishing countermeasures to respond to the delivery of advanced computers to countries of concern to the United States.

The Pentagon and the Commerce Department rejected the recommendations.

Ms. Westin warned that raising the threshold for advanced computers could increase the prospect that countries of concern to Washington will cluster computer systems to attain their military goals. Another prospect is that the elimination of export licenses for computers would hurt nonproliferation efforts by Washingon.

"The [Clinton] policy proposal would reduce information that might be useful in detecting patterns of exports to customers engaged in proliferation activities because it would eliminate an annual reporting requirement that provides information on end users," Westin said.