Steven Goldman, director of the Office of Foreign Availability at the US Department of Commerce, announced that US government has decided to lift existing export licence requirements with respect to computer systems rated at under 67MTOPS – million theoretical operations per second (CI No 2,245). The previous Commerce threshold was 12.5MTOPS. Although the change does not automatically apply in the case of the former communist states proscribed under CoCom regulations, Goldman said that the US would attempt to persuade its CoCom allies to act multilaterally to implement the US proposal. Under US law, if CoCom does not reach a consensus, the US government must act unilaterally after a moratorium period of four months. However James LeMunyon, an assistant secretary of commerce in the Bush administration predicted there would be resistance within CoCom to the US move, warning that European members might only endorse the change in return for further relaxations on the control of telecommunications products. The American Electronics Association, which had petitioned the US governmemt for a new licence-free ceiling of 210MTOPS, expressed dissatisfaction with the concession. AEA president Richard Iverson said The final recommendation falls far short of realising how far out of sync US regulations are with today’s technological advancements.
Taiwan, India
The AEA maintains that companies in Taiwan, India and South Korea, which are not CoCom members and are not bound by its licensing requirements are capable of producing systems up to the 210MTOPS level and are simply replacing potential US exports. In response, Goldman said: The Clinton administration is taking that into consideration and could perhaps propose more liberalisation in the next six months. According to US Department of Trade figures, the US government has processed 6,174 export licence applications for systems rated up to 67MTOPS since September 1992 and the value of these exports was estimated to total $3,240m.
