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Attempt To

Limit Weapons

Sales Fails

VIENNA, (Austria): Delegates from 31 nations failed to form a group to monitor new controls on international weapons trade, after Russia and Western countries argued over which sales should be made public and when, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

The two days of talks started Tuesday, aimed at setting up a secretariat based in Vienna to supervise a new arms control agreement and define its duties. But the meetings ended fruitlessly in arguments over how to regulate exports of weapons and dual-use technology.

New talks are planned for July.

Russia, a major weapons exporter, balked at declaring sales of weapons and technology in ways proposed by Western countries, the diplomatic sources said. They offered no details about the closed talks.

The new arms control agreement - the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Weapons and Dual--Use Goods and Technologies - is named after the Dutch town outside The Hague where negotiations were held last year to establish the group to monitor weapons sales.

It replaces COCOM, the body founded in 1949 by NATO to monitor sales of weapons and potentially dangerous technology to the Soviet bloc, China and their allies.-AP