New York, NY -- U.S. President Bill Clinton has announced that he will
definitely relax restrictions on exports of high-performance computers,
giving a boost to firms whose executives supported his 1992 election.

  The proposal, expected to be ratified by Clinton Friday, raises the
processing threshold from 1,500 million theoretical operations/second to
between 7,000 and 10,000 depending upon which country is due to receive
the export, according to press reports issued Thursday afternoon. In
addition, delays of six or more months before an approved sale can be
completed will be eliminated.

  Formal announcement regarding the change of policy, which follows months
of contention between the Defence, State, Energy and Commerce departments,
should come Friday, Oct. 6. At that time, HPCwire will publicize the
substance of the President's remarks. An administration official recently
told the New York Times that Clinton had told Israeli officials last week
he intended to liberalize the rules that have made it difficult for Israel
and many other countries to buy U.S. HP computers.

  "If you try to control the uncontrollable, it's not tough and pious,"
the Times quoted an anonymous senior official as saying. "It's feckless
and wasteful of government resources. We'd like to target our resources to
where we think we could make a difference."

  Press reports also noted that officials said the Clinton administration
planned to maintain the ban on exports of powerful computers to Iran,
Iraq, North Korea and Libya. U.S. intelligence agencies say those
countries are actively trying to develop nuclear weapons.

  A more liberal export policy is good news for manufacturers of high-end
computers and related software and services. If regulations are loosened,
manufacturers can sell billions of dollars worth of computers to non-
military customers in China, Russia, Israel, Pakistan and India.

  However, according to recent press reports there is some disagreement
over whether loosening export controls is a smart move.

  Advocates told The New York Times and other prominent newspapers that
U.S. companies are making more powerful machines each year. Thus, what the
administration defined two years ago as a supercomputer requiring
government approval for export is now merely a desktop computer.

  Greg Garcia, senior manager of the American Electronics Association,
praised the move to loosen restrictions but said it would provide only
"temporary relief." He said that it's a rule of thumb in computer
technology that the speed doubles roughly every 12 months.

  Eben Tisdale, general manager of government relations for
Hewlett-Packard Corp., liked the prospect of a relaxation, saying that
currently it can take up to eight weeks to clear a foreign sale.

  In a similar vein, Sun Microsystems Inc. said the company would benefit
from a policy change from increased shipments of its computer servers,
and because it would be designing chips that go into bigger
supercomputers that would be open to export.

  A spokesman for Intel Corp., said the easing would aid the company's
ability to sell its higher-end computer platforms world-wide.

  But those opposed to the easing, including some in Congress and within
the Clinton administration, fear high-performance computers will be
employed for designing missiles or atomic weapons.

  Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear
Arms Control, told The New York Times that the administration was about to
make a crucial tool available to countries building missiles and nuclear
weapons. He characterized the proposal as "a political decision to help
California," a major center for computer manufacturing hit hard by
defence cutbacks, and said the Chinese, among others, would inevitably
order the computers for civilian use and then give them to the military.

  Several legislators like Representative Floyd Spence of South Carolina,
chairman of the House National Security Committee have already written to
urge Clinton to reconsider, the Times said. The letter expressed
particular concern that India, Pakistan and China -- countries with
"major nuclear and other advanced weapons programs" -- might
obtain computers as powerful as those used to design the most
sophisticated U.S. weapons.

  And Henry Sokolski, a Pentagon official in the Bush administration,
warned that easing rules would only worsen proliferation problems. "Any
notion that you can know in advance what will be done with a computer is
nuts," The New York Times quoted him as saying.