Throughout the 1950s, Yugoslav nuclear policy was designed by President Tito and a small circle of his closest associates. Very few official documents from that time remain or indeed ever existed. Things began to change after the establishment of the UN Eighteen Nations Disarmament Committee (ENDC) in December 1961, followed by the committee’s first meeting in March 1962, which marked the beginning of global negotiations that eventually led to the signing of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) in 1963. This initiative forced the Yugoslav political leadership to approach the problem more systematically. 

The short document presented here comes from the first meeting during which the Yugoslav nuclear policy started to be officially formulated. The meeting was organized by the Yugoslav State Secretariat for Foreign Affairs [Državni sekretarijat za inostrane poslove — DSIP] and included representatives of the Yugoslav People’s Army [Jugoslovenska narodna armija — JNA], the Institute for International Politics [Institut za međunarodnu politiku] and the Federal Nuclear Energy Commission [Savezna komisija za nuklearnu energiju — SKNE]. The main goal was to initiate the coordination of activities and permanent consultations between these institutions in order to provide expert support to the DSIP and better comprehension of the ongoing negotiations in the ENDC.

The view of Frank Aiken throughout the 1960s was that once the United States and the Soviet Union had come to a basic agreement on the treaty, it was in the interests of all states to sign it on the basis of enlightened self-interest. He was not in favor of delay to finalize agreement on finer points as the will of the superpowers was of paramount importance.