Global Security Newswire

The head of a key U.S. House committee is blocking a Bush administration effort to relax export control regulations regarding the transfer of weapons to Australia and the United Kingdom, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Oct. 27).

The Bush administration has proposed allowing U.S. companies to export some nonclassified weapons and related technologies to certain Australian and British companies without first obtaining export licenses, according to AP. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee included the exemptions in the Senate version of the fiscal 2004 State Department authorization bill, which has not yet been taken up by the full Senate. While the House approved its own version of the bill, the exemptions were not included because of opposition from House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.).

In a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell dated May 5, Hyde said that a move to relax export control regulations “seems unwise and particularly incongruous with the increased threats to U.S. security and foreign policy interests since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”

“This is a moment in our nation’s history when it behooves us to strengthen, not relax, international standards for nonproliferation and military export controls,” Hyde wrote (Ken Guggenheim, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 1).