Nuclear Pledge by China Averts U.S. Sanctions

WASHINGTON — China agreed Friday not to cooperate with Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear program, a step that allowed the Clinton administration to withhold sanctions that otherwise would have been mandatory under U.S. law, the State Department announced.

Under the agreement, similar to a consent decree in civil law, the Chinese did not admit having sold a component of uranium-enrichment equipment known as ring magnets to Pakistan but agreed not to sell such equipment in the future or to provide any other assistance to “unsafeguarded” nuclear facilities.

U.S. officials hailed the statement, hammered out during four months of often acrimonious negotiations, as a major step toward preventing China from assisting Pakistan, a traditional ally, in developing a nuclear weapons capability.

There are no enforcement procedures in the agreement, and in the past China has made pledges on such subjects as copyright violations, prison labor and missile sales that it later did not keep.

Nevertheless, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that the administration will take the Chinese at their word and, “of course, we will monitor compliance.”

“The commitments that they have made to us are important commitments, and we accept” them, Burns said.

The agreement smooths over one source of Sino-American friction just days before the administration is scheduled to announce its decision on threatened commercial sanctions to punish China for pirating U.S. computer software, compact discs, motion pictures and other “intellectual property.”

Although U.S. officials insisted that the two issues were not linked, there is little doubt that if Washington had imposed sanctions in both cases, the damage to the relationship would have been multiplied.

It has been an open secret for months that the administration was reluctant to impose sanctions in the ring-magnet case because that would have provoked some retaliation by Beijing, possibly aimed at U.S. companies trying to do business in China.

Nevertheless, sanctions would have been required if Secretary of State Warren Christopher had determined that China had “willfully” exported sensitive nuclear weapons technology.

Christopher finessed the issue by concluding that, although there was ample evidence that a Chinese government-owned company sold the magnets to Pakistan, there was no proof that senior officials in Beijing knew anything about the sale, which totaled only about $70,000.

Throughout the negotiations, China refused to confirm or deny the sale, but Chinese officials said that if there had been such a deal, it would have been a routine commercial transaction unlikely to interest top officials.

The magnets are made to fit Pakistan’s uranium-enrichment centrifuge and are an important part of the equipment.

The magnets themselves, however, are relatively low-tech items that are also used in stereo equipment and car windshield wipers. U.S. officials tacitly admit that Pakistan has the capability of producing the parts, and with Chinese supplies cut off, it almost certainly will do so.

Chinese negotiators argued that ring magnets are not included on the “trigger list” of bomb components that cannot be transferred under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The United States agreed that the equipment was not on the list but argued that the spirit of the treaty banned anything that would help a non-nuclear state develop nuclear weapons.

The deal that defused the confrontation required China to agree specifically not to sell ring magnets to non-nuclear states and to pledge not to cooperate with nuclear programs in states that have not signed the nonproliferation treaty, a provision that seems to apply only to Pakistan.

India and Israel are the only other countries that have not signed the treaty, and there is no evidence that China is cooperating with either of those nations.

The promise does not prevent cooperation with countries, such as Iran, that have signed the treaty but are suspected of running a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

Times staff writer John M. Broder contributed to this report.