It was the beginning of a new arms race in Southwest Asia. The intelligence report created a furor within the Clinton administration over whether China had helped Pakistan make fuel for its nuclear weapons arsenal, estimated at ten to fifteen unassembled nuclear devices. At the State Department, Robert Einhorn, deputy assistant secretary for political-military affairs, quickly recognized the problem. He had been assigned the task of looking into the application of complex laws enacted by Congress to put teeth into policies designed to halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Made of a special alloy called samarium-cobalt, ring magnets must be precision manufactured to withstand the high speeds of gas centrifuges that are part of the process for making nuclear bomb fuel.
China is the world leader in producing the components.
The sale triggered a provision of a law on business loans that requires the secretary of state to notify the Export-Import Bank when any nation is caught helping another nation develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Einhorn called the bank and told officials the intelligence reports meant that, under the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, the bank could be required to hold up all new loan guarantees for projects sought by U.S. businesses in China. But the Commerce Department, headed by Mr. Brown, former Democratic National Committee chairman, soon was leading the charge to block economic sanctions against Beijing and Islamabad. The Clinton administration ignored the violations. The United States had imposed sanctions against China in 1993 for selling M-11 missile components but lifted them the next year at the urging of Mr. Brown and C. Michael Armstrong, chairman of Los Angeles based satellite maker Hughes Electronics.