Obama moving to decontrol US defense goods exports

PRESIDENT Barack Obama today will outline steps his administration is taking to revamp US export restrictions on defense and high-tech goods, which is expected to lead to thousands of less sensitive items being decontrolled, senior administration officials said.

"We've done this fundamentally for national security reasons so that we can ... focus our resources on protecting the most critical technologies," one of the senior officials told reporters at a briefing.

The initiative, which already has been one year in the making, responds to frustration felt by US defense and high-tech companies, who say export controls that date to the Cold War cost them billions of dollars in lost sales.

US allies also complain they often face long waits to get spare parts for US-made weapons systems because of licensing requirements as rigorous as for the weapons themselves. "We're talking nuts, bolts, screws, washers that require a license right now worldwide," a second official said.

For example, the US devotes the same resources to protecting the brake pad for the M1A1 tank as it does the tank itself, even though the brake pads are virtually identical to those used in fire trucks, the officials said.

Obama, in taped remarks to a Commerce Department conference, will discuss the steps his administration is taking to harmonise two separate export control lists - the Commerce Control List run by the Commerce Department and the US Munitions List overseen by the State Department.

The new system creates a "bright line" between the two lists to clarify to exporters and foreign buyers which department has jurisdiction.Reuters