From his Texas ranch, Bush notified congressional leaders on Wednesday that he was raising the threshold for government approval of computer exports to "Tier 3" nations, a category that also includes Israel.

Under the relaxed export control standards, individual licenses and prior government review will be required only for the export of computers that perform more than 190,000 MTOPS, or millions of theoretical operations per second.

The current threshold is 85,000 MTOPS, a performance standard that has become commonly available, The Associated Press reported.

"These reforms are needed due to the rapid rate of technological change in the computer industry. Single microprocessors available today - by mail order and the Internet - perform at more than 25 times the speed of super-computers built in the early 1990s," said White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan.

The computer chip industry pushed for the increase last year in a compromise offer. Ideally, the technology companies wanted to do away with the MTOPS standard completely, saying it would give the president more flexibility in restricting exports of high-powered computers.

Critics say a better tactic to protect national security would be to restrict just the export of certain software, such as programs to model nuclear explosions or missile guidance systems.

The United States maintains its virtual embargo on computer exports to Iraq, Iran, Libya, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Cuba, Sudan and Syria.

Bush's revised export rules implement the general policies of the Export Administration Act, legislation controlling commercial exports that could be put to military use. The act expired in 1990 and has since been kept alive through temporary extensions.

(eastday.com January 4, 2002)