US Senate backs shorter review for computer exports

WASHINGTON: The US Senate, moving to protect the nation's high technology industry, easily approved on Wednesday a measure to shorten the congressional review period for sales of high-performance computers by US companies.

On an 86-11 vote, the Senate added to a defence authorisation bill a provision that would shorten the congressional review period for exports of high-performance computers to 60 days from 180 days. The measure was previously passed by the House of Representatives.

"This legislation will help ensure that US high tech firms can compete on a level playing field with their global counterparts," said Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, a co-sponsor with Republican Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah.

Supporters said the lengthy delay in exports often made products in the fast-moving high-tech world obsolete, helping foreign computer companies challenge their U.S. competitors in overseas markets.

"We would like to make sure the international market is as dominated by American chips as we can possibly get it to be, which is why we are trying to shorten all of the time connected with this," Bennett said.

Bennett said he would have preferred cutting the review period to 30 days, but would go along with the 60 days prescribed by the House-approved measure in order to speed its final passage. The final vote on the defence bill is expected as early as Thursday. The measure defines high-performance computers as those that operate at 2,000 million theoretical operations a second.

(C) Reuters Limited 2000.