ITAR Revisions for Dual/Third Party Nationals
On December 19, 2007, an amendment to the ITAR was published (72 FR 71785 (PDF, 53KB)) that revised licensing procedures with regard to third party/dual nationals for technical assistance/manufacturing license agreements. In particular, a new §124.16 has been added to no longer require additional approval for release of technical data, defense services, and access to defense articles for third party/dual national employees of the foreign signatory/sublicensee to an agreement that are exclusively from NATO, EU Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Switzerland. They may not hold nationality from any other country. As stated in the Federal Register notice, when determining nationality the Department considers country of origin or birth in addition to citizenship. For the purposes of this approval, the individuals must be physically located within one of the countries to receive access to the technical data. This action has been taken to further facilitate defense trade after taking into account foreign policy, national security, and regulatory considerations which have been the subject of discussions with the Defense Trade Advisory Group (DTAG). A new section of the transmittal letter has also been added as §124.12(a)(10) to specifically request the authorization under §124.16. Specific language should also be added as a section in the agreement that is executed with the foreign party to identify the authorization.
Current authorizations MUST be amended to utilize the revised release procedures. The agreements must be re-executed with the foreign signatories with a clause inserted that lists countries of the nationals under §124.16 that technical data will be released. This re-executed agreement should be submitted to the Office of Defense Trade Controls Licensing (DTCL) as a minor amendment in accordance with §124.1(d), which does not require prior approval by DTCL.
The Guidelines for Preparing Agreements available on the Web site will be revised to incorporate this change.
Please click here for more licensing guidance stemming from this amendment.