jhc@mtune.UUCP (03/03/87)
With the recent crop of articles regarding the letter from some US Government agency or other to Adi Shamir, I thought it worthwhile to reproduce the following article from the Manchester Guardian Weekly, Vol 135, No. 8, week ending February 22 1987. This article is undoubtedly copyrighted by the magazine. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Manchester Guardian Weekly is published weekly (!) by The Guardian, a British newspaper. It typically contains four pages each from that week's edition of Le Monde (Paris) and The Washington Post. The rest of the ~24 pages are taken from copies of The Guardian for that week. This newspaper would very likely be suppressed in the US for being a communist publication; other countries label it as 'independant'. Subscription enquiries ($58 per year) should be directed to The Manchester Guardian Weekly, 20 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Jonathan Clark jhc@mtune.att.com -- Comments in square brackets are mine alone, and my memory is not infallible, hence the query in the last set of []s. British high-tech firms to get US vetting By Paul Brown The Government will announce this week that it is to allow American trade inspectors to examine the books of British manufacturing companies importing American parts. It has conceded the application of United States trade law to British firms, and accepted that exports from Britain containing US components will have to be licensed [sic] by the US Department of Commerce. The Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers, has described such a move as ``an unwarranted encroachment on British sovereignty''. The decision removes the final obstacle preventing the Defence Secretary, Mr George Younger, from signing the contract with Boeing to buy the Awacs early warning radar plane, announced before Christmas. Boeing said that the contract has to be subject to the US officials being allowed to police British firms who were awarded offset contracts as part of the deal. Under the American Export Administration Act of 1985 the US Administration claims jurisdiction outside its own territory. The act says that any company in Britain [any country] using components made in the US, even down to chips for computers,, must have an export licence to move them to any other country. Boeing wanted this provision written into the contract for Awacs. MPs asked the Goverment not to concede this point and said that it would be a breach of Britich sovereignty. In a recent letter to Mr Paddy Ashdown, MP for Yeovil, the Attorney-General made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with this process. The Liberal Party, which has conducted a long campaign to prevent US officials policing British companies, believes that the decision will further damage British sunrise industries. Already the US is known to have blocked export licences to British firms, only to find later that the customer has been supplied by a US computer company. [ref: Systime, a British DEC OEM, having an export licence revoked and the customer (West German?) was actually supplied by DEC directly?] The US embassy denies this and claims that it is merely to prevent high technology from reachin the Communist bloc. Mr Ashdown said: ``It is shocking and scandalous that this principle has been conceded. We fought the war in the Falklands over sovereignty and now we are prepared to give it away to the Americans.''