WSJ, Oct 6, 1995. U.S. Export Rules to Ease On Some Supercomputers Washington -- President Clinton is expected to announce today that he is easing export restrictions on certain U.S. supercomputers, a move sought by the computer industry. Administration officials say that given continuing technological advances and world-wide availability of many high-speed computers, the current restrictions are unrealistic and damaging to American companies. Critics contend, however, that easing the restrictions will exacerbate weapons proliferation. Mr. Clinton approved raising the speed of computers that may be exported to most countries to 2,000 million theoretical operations a second, or MTOPS, from 1,500 MTOPS, according to officials. For certain nations, including China, Egypt, Israel, India, Pakistan, Syria and Russia, civilian customers would be able to buy computers with speeds up to 7,000 MTOPS without prior government approval. Military customers in those countries could purchase computers with speeds of 2,000 to 7,000 MTOPS but only with an individual export license. Certain nations, such as Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya, would still be banned from buying high-speed computers. [End]