This excerpt is a part of the lengthy document from the Yugoslav Nuclear Energy Commission meeting held on April 16, 1979. The discussion included cooperation with different countries in the development of peaceful nuclear technology, exploration of options to acquire and sell uranium (yellowcake) on the global market without any restrictions, and joint programs in developing or exporting nuclear technology (Romania, Indonesia, and Iraq). 

The focus here is on investigating the possibility of constructing a nuclear reactor in Iraq in cooperation with France. The details are fuzzy, although it is undoubtedly the Osiraq nuclear reactor. Important for understanding the context is the fact that Yugoslavia and Iraq had already established lucrative barter arrangements on the principle “armaments for oil.” More importantly, the general undertone throughout this and other meetings of the Commission in a previous couple of years is the attempt of the Yugoslavs to find loopholes in the existing safeguards and other restrictions related to selling sensitive nuclear technology to other countries based on a belief that the NPT did not function and that the ‘nuclear haves’ were once again trying to reestablish much stricter monopoly on nuclear technology than before. 

The French decision to join EURATOM was conditioned on the regional agency not impinging on national nuclear programs. As early as 1955, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet had instructed French negotiators that “Euratom will not be an obstacle toward the possible decision of France … to build nuclear weapons.”  While EURATOM’s jurisdiction would be limited to negotiating purchases of fissile materials, promoting trade with the United States and the United Kingdom, and exchanging reactors designs and civilian technology among members of the Atlantic community, Couve de Murville credited EURATOM with a fringe benefit: monitoring West Germany. In this spring 1960 letter to Prime Minister Michel Debré about revising the treaty, he warned against the removal of EURATOM controls over raw uranium and thorium or enriched uranium. Their removal, he cautioned, would create a dilemma: “either abandon the idea that German’s renunciation of atomic armaments could be enforced or support the enforcement of equivalent controls under the West European Union, which … would interfere in the direction of our programs and the development of our nuclear weapons.”

Directives for topics sent to the Soviet Delegation at the XII session of the IAEA General Conference. Points made include the Soviet Union's readiness to enrich Uranium.