U.S. and Britain sign military-trade pact

[LeighAnn]

Source: MSN Money

U.S. and British leaders have clinched a defence-trade pact designed to stitch long-standing bilateral military and security ties even tighter, the State Department said on Thursday.

-snip-

The pact would carve out a kind of "license-free zone" for certain exports within a community of government and trusted contractors on both sides that meet certain requirements.

-snip-

Republicans who controlled the House of Representatives until this year had blocked the move for fear that Britain had not done enough to strengthen laws governing re-exports to third countries such as China.

"In effect, this is an effort to do the same thing without seeking House approval," said Bialos, now a Washington lawyer specializing in Defence. "The calculus apparently is that it is easier to get Senate approval of a treaty than House approval" of a waiver of rules that control arms traffic.

Read more: http://news.money.msn.co.uk/article.aspx?as=article&f=uk_-_olgbbus&t=3581&id=5768998&d=20070629&do=http://news.money.msn.co.uk&i=http://news.money.msn.co.uk/mediaexportlive&ks=0&mc=10&ml=ma&lc=en&ae=windows-1252

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Apparently Bush & Blair worked it all out on the 26th, the day before Blair "stepped aside" and became our new Iraq envoy

[Captain Hilts]

1. It's REALLY tight already in terms of intelligence and facilities.

The British have their own facilities for Trident submarines in Georgia alongside ours.

[Kagemusha]

2. Well that's interesting. This will come up soon w/ BAE & Armor Holdings

and the investigation into BAE regarding bribery to the Saudis.

If there actually is a real investigation. Some say Britain's shutting down its own investigation was at the US' urging to begin with. I hardly think that Blair needed the encouragement, personally, but that is a guess only.