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An initiative to create a nuclear-free zone in the territory of Poland, the FRG and the GDR was unveiled by Minister of Foreign Affairs Adam Rapacki on 2 October 1957 at the 12th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations.1 On the same date, also in New York, the minister of foreign affairs of Czechoslovakia, Václav David, declared the readiness of his country to accede to the zone.2 Yet Polish-Soviet consultations on a denuclearized zone had been underway already in 1956 and the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) had launched activities on this concept in late 1955. This is evidenced by a statement, made by the head of the MFA's Division III Józef Winiewicz (who subsequently served for many years as vice-minister) at a December 1955 MFA council, that Poland could be developing on its own "a platform for international cooperation." Tadeusz Marczak considers this "a moment from which to date the building up of 'Poland's autonomous initiative for international cooperation.'"3 As a result, Winiewicz drafted, and sent to Vice-minister Marian Naszkowski on 27 June 1956, a disarmament proposal which provided for the establishment of a limited nuclear forces and armaments zone to span the entire Germany, Denmark, the Benelux, and parts of the territories of France, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The proposal, in the form of a memorandum, was sent for consultation to Poland's ambassadors to Paris, London and Washington and to the representative in the UNO in New York (to be delivered to them personally).4
A modified version of the proposal was also presented to the Soviet Union. In a memo on a conversation with the Czechoslovak chargé d'affaires on 15 May 1957, Vice-minister Józef Winiewicz noted, with reference to the Polish September 1956 memorandum: "I had an impression that news of the confidential memorandum submitted by us to the MID [Ministerstvo Inostrannykh Del], on the 'Polish initiative' on a limited armaments zone, had reached Prague. It will be remembered that some elements of the 'Polish initiative' had been abstracted for incorporation into Comrade Bulganin's November speech on disarmament and Comrade Zorin's addresses to this session of the Disarmament Sub- Committee."5 It is worth noting that Winiewicz did not want to make the contents of the Polish memorandum known to the...