“The Congress finds that—“(1) nations in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region, which accounted for over 40 percent of the international trade in weapons and related equipment and services during the decade of the 1980’s, are the principal market for the worldwide arms trade;
“(2) regional instability, large financial resources, and the desire of arms-supplying governments to gain influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region, contribute to a regional arms race;
“(3) the continued proliferation of weapons and related equipment and services contribute further to a regional arms race in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region that is politically, economically, and militarily destabilizing;
“(4) the continued proliferation of unconventional weapons, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, as well as delivery systems associated with those weapons, poses an urgent threat to security and stability in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region;
“(5) the continued proliferation of ballistic missile technologies and ballistic missile systems that are capable of delivering conventional, nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads undermines security and stability in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region;
“(6) future security and stability in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region would be enhanced by establishing a stable military balance among regional powers by restraining and reducing both conventional and unconventional weapons;
“(7) security, stability, peace, and prosperity in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region are important to the welfare of the international economy and to the national security interests of the United States;
“(8) future security and stability in the Middle East and Persian Gulf region would be enhanced through the development of a multilateral arms transfer and control regime similar to those of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the Australia Chemical Weapons Suppliers Group;
“(9) such a regime should be developed, implemented, and agreed to through multilateral negotiations, including under the auspices of the 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council;
“(10) confidence-building arms control measures such as the establishment of a centralized arms trade registry at the United Nations, greater multinational transparency on the transfer of defense articles and services prior to agreement or transfer, cooperative verification measures, advanced notification of military exercises, information exchanges, on-site inspections, and creation of a Middle East and Persian Gulf Conflict Prevention Center, are important to implement an effective multilateral arms transfer and control regime;
“(11) as an interim step, the United States should consider introducing, during the ongoing negotiations on confidence security-building measures at the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) [now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe], a proposal regarding the international exchange of information, on an annual basis, on the sale and transfer of major military equipment, particularly to the Middle East and Persian Gulf region; and
“(12) such a regime should be applied to other regions with the ultimate objective of achieving an effective global arms transfer and control regime, implemented and enforced through the United Nations Security Council, that—“(A) includes a linkage of humanitarian and developmental objectives with security objectives in Third World countries, particularly the poorest of the poor countries; and
“(B) encourages countries selling military equipment and services to consider the following factors before making conventional arms sales: the security needs of the purchasing countries, the level of defense expenditures by the purchasing countries, and the level of indigenous production of the purchasing countries.