Washington -- The U.S. Department of Commerce has listed research facilities in Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel as engaging in weapons proliferation and has required U.S. companies to inquire about whether to submit license applications for all exports to these destinations.

These additions to what Commerce calls the Entity List were published in the June 30 Federal Register.

The list includes Chelyabinsk-70, the Russian nuclear weapons lab that earlier this year boasted about its import of a U.S.-made supercomputer, thus setting off a U.S. criminal investigation and attempts in Congress to reverse Clinton administration decisions that relaxed computer export controls.

Besides Chelyabinsk-70, which is called the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Technical Physics, the Federal Register notice also lists the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (Arzamas-16) "and any other entities, institutes or centers associated with the Ministry for Atomic Power of Russia located in either Snezhinsk or Kremlev, Russia."

Destinations in China listed include the Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics in Beijing, the High Power Laser Laboratory in Shanghai and a number of laboratories associated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics in and near Mianyang, Sichuan province.

Also listed were the following destinations:

-- Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research, Khalpakham, India.

-- Khan Research Laboratory, Kahuta, Pakistan.

-- Nuclear Research Center at Negev, Dimona, Israel.

-- Pakistan Institute for Nuclear Science and Technology, Rawalpindi, Pakistan, including New Labs Rawalpindi.

Before June 30 only two destinations were on the Commerce Department's Entity List: Bharat Electronics Limited of India, listed in May; and Ben-Gurion University of Israel, listed in February.

Commerce Department officials say they expect more additions to the list over time. The list has become public only after years of Clinton administration inter-agency wrangling, which included reluctance at the State Department to damage relations with the foreign governments involved and reluctance among U.S. intelligence agencies to compromise their sources.

NNNN