Background: The Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers Act establishes four eligibility criteria for countries to receive American arms: democratic form of government; respect for the human rights of its citizens; non-aggression against neighboring states; and participation in the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms. The Code's requirements are all primary foreign policy tenets of past and present U.S. administrations. Nevertheless, 85% of U.S. arms transfers during 1990-95 went to states which do not meet these criteria. Check out the Customer Profiles page to see what is going on in some of America's leading arms clients.

On June 10th, the House of Representatives voted to accept the Code as an amendment to H.R. 1757, the FY1998-99 State Department Authorization Act. Several members from both parties made very strong statements in support of it. Read the text of the Amendment and the floor statements.

The Senate passed its version of the same bill on June 17th, but without including the Code of Conduct. Members of the House International Relations Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee started meeting during July in a "conference committee" to resolve differences between the two bills.

Both the Clinton Administration and the arms industry strongly oppose this measure; they want it removed from the final bill. We need to work on the conferees to ensure that the House of Representatives' position on the Code prevails.

Action Needed:

CONFERENCE COMMITTEE
The members of the conference committee on H.R. 1757 met for several hours on July 29 and 30, but the negotiations made very little progress toward a final version of the bill. The conference postponed all further action, including a decision on the Code of Conduct, until after the August recess.

Congress reassembled in the days after Labor Day, but the conference committee has not yet decided on a course of action or a schedule for future meetings.

The members of the conference committee are listed below. If you are a constituent of one of these members, please contact and urge him to maintain the Code of Conduct in the final version of the State Department Authorization Act. The Senate conferees will need more background information on the measure, as they have not voted on it this year.