Final Declaration (of the Parties)

1. Representatives of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Russian Federation, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States met in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, on 18 and 19 December 1995.

2. The representatives agreed to establish The Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies.

3. The representatives established initial elements of the new arrangement, to be submitted to their respective Governments for approval.

4. They also established a Preparatory Committee of the Whole to start work in January 1996.

5. The Representatives agreed to locate the Secretariat of The Wassenaar Arrangement in Vienna, Austria. The first plenary meeting will take place in Vienna on 2 and 3 April 1996.

Twenty-eight countries agreed today in the Hague to establish the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies. They will form for the first time a global multilateral regime covering both armaments and sensitive dual-use goods and technology. The arrangement will respond to the new security threats of the post Cold War by providing greater openness through information sharing about arms and technology transfers worldwide.

The regime will focus on the threats to international and regional peace and security. A central part of the regime is the commitment by its members to prevent the acquisition of armaments and sensitive dual-use items for military end-users to states whose behavior today is, or becomes, a cause for serious concern, such as Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea.

The regime will also undertake to prevent destabilizing accumulations of conventional arms worldwide. The Iraqi war taught us that indiscriminate exports of conventional weapons and sensitive dual-use technologies can pose serious threats to our interests, foreign policy goals, and to international security. This regime will seek to apply the lessons of Iraq to prevent similar destabilizing build-ups. The Wassenaar Arrangement will also fill an important gap in the global non-proliferation regimes by covering conventional arms and associated dual-use technologies. It will encourage adherence to the current non-proliferation regimes by requiring its members to adhere to those regimes.

The arrangement seeks to prevent destabilizing buildups of weapons by establishing a formal process of transparency, consultation, and where appropriate, multilateral restraint. Participants have agreed to control through their national policies those items and technologies contained in a list of Dual-Use Goods and Technologies and a separate Munitions List.

It meets the basic objectives of the U.S. to move forward and begin cooperation with the other countries in the arrangement, but it still does not meet all of our expectations with respect to openness and restraint. We will now seek to incorporate additional provisions in the arrangement to address these problems.

* Declaration of the Parties and Department of State fact sheet issued December 9, 1995.

Go to Next PageMain Table of Contents ACDA Homepage