St. Joseph Church
Bristol, Connecticut

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti
Pastoral Minister

The Missile Technology Control Regime

The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) is an important informal agreement among 32 nations. This important agreement is meant to slow down and put an end to the exporting of high technology systems that can contribute directly or indirectly to the spread of ballistic missile technology. For those individuals and groups committed to working for peace some familiarity with this agreement is important for helping others to understand a very important dimension to growing problem of the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the ballistic missiles to carrying them.

The MTCR: An Overview

The regime is designed to slow and stem the spread of ballistic and cruise missiles capable of delivering a 500-kilogram payload 300 kilometers or more, by establishing a common export control policy and a shared list of controlled items that each country puts into force with its own national legislation. The only absolute prohibition in the regime’s guidelines is on the transfer of complete facilities for regime-controlled missile production.

The MTCR is not a treaty and there fore it is not legally binding. Members to the regime voluntarily pledge to adopt the regime’s export guidelines and to restrict the export of items contained in the regime’s annex. U.S. laws, however, require the MTCR, even if that firm or individual operates within a state that is not an adherent or member of the regime.

Adherents:

A number of non-member states have made public and legislative commitments to adhere unilaterally to the MTCR Guidelines and Annex. These countries include: Bulgaria, Israel, Romania, the Slovak Republic and South Korea.

China informed the United States in November of 1992 that it would abide by the MTCR’s guidelines and in October of 1994 Beijing reaffirmed its commitment to the guidelines, pledged to stop all surface-to-surface missile sales. However, there are some indications that China has not fully complied with the terms of the regime.

The Guidelines for the MTCR

The factors that member states agree to consider have remained unchanged since the MTCR’s inception. The regime was expanded in January of 1993 to include the limiting of technologies that could lead to the development of weapons of mass destruction. Any missiles that exceed the regime’s 500kg/300kg specifications, however, are still covered by the regime regardless of intent.

Sanctions

Although there are no sanctions mandated by the MTCR, the applicable U.S. laws that enforce the MTCR are the Arms Export Control Act, the Export Administrations, as amended by the 1990 Missile Control Act, and the National Defense Authorization Act for 1991. Depending on the nature of the violation, federal law may require:

For transfers involving complete missile systems, all U.S. Government contracts and export licenses to the sanctioned entity must be denied for at least two years

For transfers involving missile components, production equipment or technologies, U.S. Government contracts and export licenses for MTCR Annex items to the sanctioned entity must be denied for at least two years

For transfers deemed to have Substantially contributed to the design, development or production of a missile in a country that is not an MTCR adherent, the importation of any goods into the United States from the entities involved must be denied for at least two years

For exports of controlled systems or technology, member-states cannot be sanctioned unless they fail to take adequate investigative or enforcement action.

Reference: Arms Control Association at http://www.armscontrol.org/FACTS/mtcr.html

Compiled by Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created 8/9/2000