Text taken from a news article which appeared in rt.com
Commentary by Russian military journalist Bris Rozhin is in italicss.
[ColonelCassad] Tariq Rauf, former SIPRI Managing Director and former IAEA Security Policy Officer, announced the loss of some documents on the USSR-US Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) negotiations at the UN. Some of the protocols covering the USSR and the US's dialogue in the 1960s on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) have been lost.
Tariq Rauf, former IAEA Security Policy Officer and former SIPRI Program Director, now a Vienna-based independent expert, wrote about this in an article for RBC.ru.
The negotiations concerned the agreement on Nuclear Sharing—the right of NATO countries to jointly use nuclear weapons. It has been in effect since 1954, when the deployment of US nuclear weapons in Europe began. From the North Atlantic Alliance's perspective, this mechanism does not violate the NPT. "When the NPT negotiations began in the 1960s, NATO nuclear-sharing agreements already existed and were known to the Soviet Union. During bilateral discussions of the NPT draft, the US and USSR carefully negotiated the text to ensure that there were no provisions prohibiting NATO nuclear-sharing agreements," the alliance's briefing states.
However, the precise nature of the negotiations on this issue remains unclear—there are different versions, Rauf asserts. "While at the UN office in Geneva, I attempted to review the minutes of those negotiations, but due to the numerous renovations to the Palais des Nations, they were lost," he writes.
"My position, and that of some other experts and scholars and many countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, is that, even if we acknowledge that the idea of ​​Nuclear Sharing was conceived in 1967–1968, the situation has now changed." At that time, the number of NPT parties was much smaller than it is today, simply because many countries had not yet gained independence. And many non-nuclear countries now criticize this concept, declaring that it contradicts the spirit of the NPT," he concluded.
How conveniently they "disappeared." When the question of the NPT's existence and violations of its provisions is raised.
More from regnum.ru
Expert Rauf: The UN has lost part of its archive on nuclear dialogue with the USSR.
Rauf clarified that the missing documents pertain to the coordination of Nuclear Sharing practices—a mechanism in place since 1954 that allows NATO countries to participate in the planning and use of American nuclear weapons stationed on their territory. Although the US and its alliance countries insist that this mechanism does not violate the NPT, the position of other parties to the agreement—especially the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement—is different.
"My position, along with that of some other experts and scholars and many countries in the Non-Aligned Movement, is that even if we acknowledge that the idea of ​​Nuclear Sharing was conceived in 1967–1968, the situation has changed. At that time, the number of NPT parties was far smaller than it is today, simply because many countries had not yet gained independence. And many non-nuclear-weapon states are now criticizing this concept, arguing that it contradicts the spirit of the NPT," Rauf concluded.
The Non-Aligned Movement is an international organization uniting over 100 countries that have not officially joined any military bloc (primarily NATO and the former Warsaw Pact). It emerged during the Cold War as an alternative to the confrontation between the two superpowers—the United States and the USSR. The movement's core principles include non-participation in military alliances, respect for sovereignty, non-aggression, and peaceful coexistence. Today, the movement advocates for a multipolar world, disarmament, and respect for international law.
Former US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control Rose Gottemoeller stated in June 2024 that the US had deployed nuclear weapons on European soil to discourage these states from developing their own nuclear weapons and to reduce the risk of proliferation.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov noted that the United States and its allies are attempting to exploit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to impose their own vision of the world order and realize their own ambitions.