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U.S. Department of State
96/01/23 Address: Lynn Davis on The Wassenaar Arrangement
Office of the Spokesman
U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman
_____________________________________________________________________
EMBARGOED UNTIL DELIVERY
Address by
Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International
Security Affairs Lynn E. Davis
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington D.C.
January 23, 1996
The Wassenaar Arrangement
Introduction
In December 1995, twenty-eight governments agreed to establish a new
international regime to increase transparency and responsibility for the
global market in conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies.
The official name of the regime is "The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export
Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies" --
Wassenaar being the town outside The Hague where five rounds of
negotiations took place over the past two years.
The Wassenaar Arrangement is just an initial international framework
that will need to be elaborated and defined more fully. But it already
represents some notable achievements for U.S. foreign policy. For the
first time there is a global mechanism for controlling transfers of
conventional armaments, and a venue in which governments can consider
collectively the implications of various transfers on their
international and regional security interests. In view of the close
association between advanced technologies, including production
technologies, and modern battlefield weapons, sensitive dual-use
commodities will receive the same measure of scrutiny as do arms.
Moreover, the preliminary scope of international support for this
enterprise is already quite broad. Our friends and allies in Europe and
in the Pacific comprise the core membership, but Russia and the four
Visegrad states of Central Europe have also joined as full members.
The composition and the goals of The Wassenaar Arrangement are tailored
to respond to the new security threats of the post-Cold War world, and
will close a critical gap in the international control mechanisms, which
have concentrated on preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction and their delivery systems. While The Wassenaar Arrangement
will not duplicate the other non-proliferation mechanisms, it will
through a variety of means complement and, where necessary, reinforce
them.
Restraint in Trade to Pariahs
Even before its establishment, the regime has served to attract
countries worldwide wishing to join the first post-Cold War security
framework.
To meet the membership criteria, they have taken steps to adhere to the
policies of the other non-proliferation regimes and to establish
effective export controls. Most importantly, all of the participating
countries currently maintain national policies to prevent transfers of
arms and sensitive technologies for military purposes to the four pariah
countries--Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea. This is a critical
requirement that the United States insisted on--and will continue to
insist on in examining the credentials of new members.
The United States has sought and obtained commitments through sensitive,
high-level negotiations that produced bilateral agreements with Russia
and other prospective members to close down their arms sales to Iran and
forego any new contracts involving arms and arms-related technologies.
By requiring responsible arms transfer policies as a condition for
membership, the new regime furthers our international security interests
and the security of long-standing allies, such as Israel and South Korea
who live in dangerous neighborhoods.
Further, The Wassenaar Arrangement calls for enhancing cooperation among
the participants to prevent the acquisition of armaments and sensitive
dual-use items for military end-uses, if the situation in a region or
the behavior of a state is or becomes a cause for serious concern to the
participating states. The transparency provisions in the new
arrangement and our own national technical means will give us confidence
that current policies of restraint toward the pariah countries are
continuing and that future transfer policies remain consistent with this
goal.
Does this mean that we have bridged our differences with Europe over
high technology sales to Iran? Unfortunately, we continue to have
serious concerns with European policy in this area. What we have
obtained to date is a growing recognition that certain levels of high
technology trade, even when intended for civilian use, should not be
carried on in secrecy.
When it comes to dangerous regimes like Iran, international
transparency--and accountability--are necessary. The Wassenaar
Arrangement will help advance that proposition through the initial
information sharing measures. But, those measures need to go much
further before we can say there are effective international guidelines
in place that will prevent future tyrants from embarking upon the kind
of military build-up that Saddam Hussein undertook before invading
Kuwait.
Preventing Destabilizing Accumulations of Arms
Indeed, the Gulf War has been a critical factor shaping the U.S.
negotiating positions, because it serves as a stark reminder of the
dangers to international peace and security that can result from the
destabilizing accumulations of conventional weapons and the
indiscriminate export of arms and sensitive dual-use technologies. The
case of Iraq showed us that often the only constraint on a state's
ability to obtain dangerous arms is its ability to pay for them.
Suppliers from both East and West, including our allies and American
firms, contributed in different ways to Saddam Hussein's multi-billion
dollar military build-up.
How will this arrangement begin to help us prevent future Iraqs?
During plenary discussions and working group meetings, governments will
share intelligence on potential threats to international and regional
peace and stability. They will look particularly at clandestine
projects and dubious acquisition trends. They will also exchange
specific information on a regular basis about global transfers to non-
participating countries of certain sensitive dual-use goods and
technologies. More than one hundred of these have been selected for
this information sharing, including machine tools, computers, and
telecommunications. The details of this special sensitive list will be
published shortly.
Governments have agreed to notify denials of items on this list to non-
participating states promptly on an individual, case-by-case basis and
of transfers on an aggregate and periodic basis. They will also require
notification of any transfers of any sensitive list item previously
denied by another member state for an essentially identical transaction.
This transparency in the transfer of sensitive dual-use goods and
technologies will help the new regime identify acquisition patterns that
suggest emerging threats to regional and international peace.
Transparency also allows countries to alert one another to export
requests that warranted denials. This will help foster common and
consistent export policies, while eliminating inadvertent undercuts by
participants. Although all export decisions will remain fundamentally
at the discretion of each country, transparency will enhance
responsibility in arms transfers because countries will only go forward
with those transfers that they are prepared to defend to the others in
the arrangement.
We will obtain similar benefits from the transparency regime on the arms
side. We will provide information on arms transfers on a weapons list,
that initially will be composed of the categories of major weapons
systems used for the CFE Treaty and the UN Arms Register. The
information will come twice a year and include more details than
previously available, such as descriptions of the model and type of all
weapons, except for missiles. And we have agreed as a priority to
expand and redefine that list to cover more comprehensively the weapons
of modern warfare.
In the cases of both armaments and dual-use items, governments will have
the ability to request additional information on individual transfers
through diplomatic channels.
In addition, The Wassenaar Arrangement is expected to provide for more
intensive consultations and more intrusive information sharing among six
major weapons suppliers: the U.S., United Kingdom, Russia, France,
Germany, and Italy.
From the United States perspective, we hope that this group will provide
the means of defining common approaches to trade with regions of
potential instability, such as the Middle East and South Asia. It could
also include steps to enhance stability by preventing the introduction
of sophisticated weaponry in certain parts of the world, where it
currently does not exist. We have made some specific proposals to the
other five suppliers concerning timely notification of shipments of
major weapons and the development of measures to address situations of
particular concern.
National Controls
As is the case for the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, and
the Missile Technology Control Regime, The Wassenaar Arrangement is
based on national controls. It is not directed against any state or
group of states and will not impede bona fide transactions. Nor will it
interfere with the rights of states to acquire legitimate means with
which to defend themselves. Rather it is focused on the behavior of
states, and especially on dangerous behavior.
Participants have agreed to control globally all items set forth on a
basic list of dual-use goods and technologies and on a munitions list,
with the objective of preventing unauthorized transfers or re-transfers
of these items. The new arrangement will thus not involve license-free
trade among the participants. Governments have also agreed to exercise
extreme vigilance in trade on a very sensitive list of dual-use goods
and technologies.
Controls of items on the various lists will
be implemented through each of the participating country's laws and
regulations. In the U.S., most of the items covered under this
arrangement are already subject to U.S. licensing requirements. Any
modifications to U.S. regulations necessary to carry out the
requirements of the arrangement will be published in the coming months.
Next Steps
The first plenary meeting of The Wassenaar Arrangement is slated for
early April in Vienna. Vienna will be the home base for the regime and
the site of a small secretariat to conduct day-to-day work. Member
governments will use the intervening months to make preparations at the
national level necessary to carry out the understandings they have
reached and to work out the modalities for sharing information on
specific transfers.
The Wassenaar Arrangement will be open, on a global and non-
discriminatory basis to all countries meeting the agreed membership
criteria. There is a line forming of countries seeking membership,
e.g., Argentina, South Korea, Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine. We hope that
some of these countries will have met the criteria by the time of our
April plenary.
Perspective on the Arrangement
Although the COCOM parties were responsible for initiating development
of The Wassenaar Arrangement, the successor regime differs significantly
in its goals and procedures, given the changed strategic environment.
COCOM was designed as an institution of the Cold War to respond to the
threat posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. The West sought to
maintain its qualitative edge on the battlefield by a virtual
prohibition on sales of arms to "communist countries" and by controlling
the export of strategic products and technical data.
As the original threats of the Cold War diminished, new threats to
global security began to emerge, including the spread of weapons of mass
destruction and their delivery systems. This led the U.S. and other
countries to develop worldwide non-proliferation regimes, such as the
Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the
Australia Group. The Wassenaar Arrangement extends and complements this
development. And it begins, as did these other regimes, with the
initial elements essential to getting underway the practical work--
frameworks, basic guidelines, and lists.
Although we are pleased that the regime will be up and running at the
April plenary, I want to note quite frankly that the arrangement falls
short of U.S. goals in some important areas. We need to go further.
Americans hold as a fundamental principle the importance of promoting
international responsibility in arms transfers and in public
accountability for these transfers. Not all participants in this
arrangement share this view and some have consistently resisted
comprehensive information sharing--even in diplomatic channels.
Specifically, the United States found itself alone in supporting prior
notification of transfers.
The United States also did not win support for focusing the information
sharing on regions of instability and where the security risks are
greatest, because participants raised political objections to
"targeting" specific regions or countries. Instead, we will begin with
a global exchange. As a result, we will share and obtain not only all of
the information that we would have available through a regional focus,
but additional information as well.
That said, The Wassenaar Arrangement provides an initial international
framework to respond to the critical security threats of the post-Cold
War world and to promote the overall non-proliferation and conventional
arms transfer policies of the Clinton Administration. The realization of
a broadly based multilateral arrangement covering conventional arms and
dual-use commodities has only been possible through strong American
leadership, leadership which must continue to ensure the further
development of more specific measures in the new regime to meet the
risks to international peace and stability around the world.
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