Tuesday, July 30, 2002

India: Washington Considers Allowing Transfer of Arrow Interceptor
By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Calling missile defenses an “inherently stabilizing concept,” a senior U.S. defense official yesterday said the United States is considering allowing Israel to sell Arrow missile interceptors to India.

The decision would factor Israeli and Indian needs as well as U.S. obligations under the Missile Technology Control Regime, a voluntary set of export control guidelines intended to limit missile proliferation.

The Pentagon view — delivered by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Marshall Billingslea at a Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee hearing — appeared at odds with the State Department position expressed at the same hearing and a Washington Post report last week that Secretary of State Colin Powell planned to express his opposition to the deal when he met with Indian officials this past weekend (see GSN, July 23).

State Department officials reportedly were concerned that if India were to obtain the Arrow, it might fuel tensions with Pakistan. The two nuclear rivals seemed on the brink of war only several weeks ago.

“South Asia is a region of tension, as is obvious by ongoing events. India is a country that’s pursuing programs of proliferation concern, so by definition, there would be issues that one would have to consider of that nature in deciding whether or not to go ahead with such a sale,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Vann Van Diepen, testifying alongside Billingslea.

The Arrow missile interceptor is coproduced by Israel and the United States, with Washington providing the bulk of the funding. The cooperative agreement gives the United States the power to veto any transfer of Arrow technology to a third party.

Although it is a defensive system, the Arrow nevertheless triggers the most restrictive MTCR guidelines because its propulsion system is powerful enough to deliver a 500-kilogram payload over a 300-kilometer range. Such a missile is considered to be “Category 1” system under the MTCR.

“I think clearly the administration has some decisions to make about how to square its missile defense promotion efforts and its missile nonproliferation goals,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.

“The hearing yesterday made abundantly clear that the Defense and State Departments are crossing wires on this one. And it’s clear that any Arrow sale would have to cross the MTCR threshold. The MTCR was designed to prevent that kind of transfer.”

What India Needs

Billingslea’s comments addressed an issue raised last week by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) of how the United States could pursue a national missile defense effort while denying another country the same capability.

“We believe that missile defenses, generally speaking, are part of an inherently stabilizing concept. The right to defend yourself against these missiles is something that we feel is a matter to explore with the Indians, with the Pakistanis if they’re interested,” Billingslea said.

“What I would say is, we need to look at it more from the standpoint of, what do the Indians feel they need in terms of defense for the region?” he said.

In a report to Congress earlier this month, the Pentagon said it expected aggressive U.S. national missile defense development to drive China to improve and increase its nuclear warhead delivery platforms (see GSN, July 15).

A Nonbinding Regime

The State Department’s Van Diepen stressed Israel’s commitments to restrict transfers of certain, potentially destabilizing missile technology in accordance with the MTCR.

The Arrow, he said, is an “MTCR Category 1 rocket system. Israel is a country that unilaterally has pledged its adherence to the MTCR. So it, just as we, or countries that are members of the MTCR, is committed to apply what’s called a ‘strong presumption of denial’ to exports of any Category I system, including Arrow, to any end user for any purpose.”

Billingslea said the administration has not yet developed a position whether the MTCR restrictions should take precedence in an administration decision, saying that might depend on what the Indians say they need for security.

“The Arrow system, because it’s an MTCR-class missile, does raise certain obligations that we have under the MTCR, and I don’t think the administration has come to a position on that whole complex issue of balancing the MTCR, our defense cooperation with India, so on and so forth. But it’s a matter under active discussion. Again, we also need to hear from the Indians in terms of what they want and what they need.”

The MTCR is not a legally binding agreement, but rather, includes a set of guidelines that parties voluntarily agree to follow to discourage proliferation of WMD delivery systems.

The regime does not actually forbid transfer of Arrow, or other Category I systems, but the guidelines state there should be “a strong presumption to deny such transfers.”

“Israel would have to go through the necessary procedures to decide that it could overcome that strong presumption of denial and make that sale. And that’s by definition not an easy matter,” said Van Diepen.

While “the strong presumption is not an absolute ban,” Van Diepen said, “it can be overcome on so-called ‘rare occasions’ that are extremely well justified in terms of five specific nonproliferation and export control factors in the MTCR guidelines.”

The five factors to be considered when allowing sensitive missile-technology transfers are concerns about weapons of mass destruction proliferation; the capabilities and objectives of the missile and space programs of the recipient state; the significance of the transfer in terms of the potential development of delivery systems (other than manned aircraft) for weapons of mass destruction; the assessment of the end use of the transfers, including the relevant assurances of the recipient states; and the applicability of relevant multilateral agreements.

Overruling the guidelines, the United States in the past sold Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles and conventional Tomahawk cruise missiles to the United Kingdom.

Weakening the Regime

Critics of the potential Arrow transfer to India say it, and other possible exports that could be conceived as violating the spirit of the MTCR, would undermine the regime. Van Diepen acknowledged such concerns when discussing U.S.-Israeli coproduction plans and the possibility of the United States simply selling fully assembled Arrow systems to Israel.

“In terms of the MTCR guidelines, we would have to be prepared to live with whatever precedents that other countries decided to draw from that sale,” he said.

“If the U.S. said yes to a Category I rocket system export to Israel, it’s going to be hard for us potentially to say no to a Russian export of Category I rocket technology to Iran.”