US sanctions on India after the Asian country conducted five underground nuclear tests will ban the sale of high-end computers, but not of software and microprocessors. The White House issued an interim injunction exempting most US firms that have contact with private firms in India, but suspended export licenses of some firms authorized to sell high-performance computers. However, this may be seen as coming rather too late in the day, following revelations that IBM Corp was given US government approval to export a 32-processor IBM RS/6000 SP2 supercomputer to an Indian research center involved in work on the nuclear bombs (CI No 3,413).
