At their meeting today, President Clinton and President Yeltsin agreed toexpand cooperation on export controls to halt the spread of weapons of massdestruction and their means of delivery. The two presidents agreed toregularize and develop a series of interagency subgroups to enhance exportcontrol cooperation in seven principal areas: missile technology, nuclearweapons and material, implementation of so-called "catch-all" legislation,conventional arms transfers, law enforcement, customs and licensing.

The subgroups will begin meeting this month to share information,experience and expertise on export control issues and practices. Expandedworking-level cooperation will enhance the effectiveness of Russia's exportcontrol system. To facilitate rapid and reliable means of communicationwhen faced with fast-breaking cases of export control concern, the UnitedStates and Russia have agreed to establish a protected communicationscapability channel between senior officials of both countries. Thiscommunications capability channel ensures the immediate and confidentialexchange of information on a broad range of nonproliferation matters.

This expanded cooperation on nonproliferation will strengthen Russia'scapacity to sustain recent progress on clamping down on export controlviolations.

After extensive bilateral consultations, in July, Russia initiatedinvestigations of nine Russian entities that may have violated Russianexport controls by assisting Iran's ballistic missile program. In responseto this Russian action, the Administration applied tough economic penaltieson seven of those entities. On Monday, Russia announced the preliminaryresults of its investigations, ordering several entities to halt exports toIran's missile program. We encourage the Russian government to takeadditional steps to investigate suspect entities and strengthen exportcontrol laws and regulations.

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