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An across the board relaxation in the types of high-technology equipment
that can be exported to the Soviet Union – planned before the failed coup
– looks likely to go ahead.

Members of COCOM, the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export
Controls, agreed in May to free from licence control all but a few technologies
with clear military value (This Week, 8 June). The changes were to come
into force on 1 September.

Following the coup attempt in Moscow, Britain’s Department of Trade
and Industry put the new measures under review. But after President Gorbachev
resumed power a DTI spokesman said: ‘The indications are that the COCOM
changes will go ahead.’