The finalization of a completed draft nuclear nonproliferation treaty, which the ENDC transmitted to by the United Nations without endorsement on March 18, 1968, launched a French review of the NPT’s implications for international law. The draft NPT was accompanied by a proposed United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSC), whose soft guarantees against nuclear-weapon use or threats had been a compromise workd out between Washington and Moscow. An initial study by Foreign Ministry lawyers identified numerous “juridical reasons… to fight against a project that, in its letter if not its spirit, constitutes a revision of the [UN] Charter." The report elaborated on how the hierarchization of “forms of aggression” would “downgrade” non-nuclear (i.e. conventional) violence. Non-nuclear-weapon states treaty signatories would receive non-binding security guarantees. The “Anglo-Saxons and Soviets” would maintain “freedom of action as far as what measures they choose to adopt.” Although the French government’s foremost legal experts opted not to advise vetoing the UNSC resolution, they warned the NPT package could serve as a warrant for nuclear-armed permanent members of the UN Security Council to wage “preventive war” in the name of worldwide nonproliferation.

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.”

This report recounts developments at the UN First Committee from the beginning of the special session, April 24, to the plenary vote on June 12, 1968. Among the interesting observations was how the “most important resistance cell had … surprisingly developed among the Black African states,” who had sought concessions from the United States on apartheid South Africa’s mandate over South West Africa (modern-day Namibia). The report notes the various changes forced on the superpowers by Italy and Mexico on behalf of the non-nuclear-weapon delegations. The aide-memoire concluded that “[a]lthough these concessions [were] more apparent than real, they served as a pretext for a number of delegations, under intense Soviet and American pressure, to go along with the draft resolution thus revised.” The French delegate to the United Nations, Armand Berard, explained to the General Assembly on June 12 the reasons for France’s abstention. In accordance with Francis Perrin’s recommendations, Berard elaborated that although France would not sign the NPT when “the real issue was effective nuclear disarmament,” it would nonetheless pledged to behave “[e]xactly in such a way as those States which opt to adhere to it.”

France’s staging of atmospheric and underground tests in Algeria became increasingly untenable when neighboring African countries protested and even temporarily broke diplomatic relations with Paris. Once Algeria became independent in 1962, French authorities made plans to develop a test site in Polynesia.

The Indian Atomic Energy Commission meets with the French High Commissioner for Atomic Energy Joliot-Curie to discuss nuclear cooperation between India and France.

The French nuclear program had been of great concern to US presidents during the 1960s because Paris had defied US pressure and was also suspected of supporting proliferation by aiding the Israeli nuclear program. This recently declassified estimate, prepared at the close of the Johnson administration, gives a picture of a program that was slowing down because of internal financial and economic problems, in part by the impact of the May 1968 student and worker uprising.

US-UK discussion of French nuclear weapons potential and efforts that could be undertaken to hinder or advance the their program. The French request for technical assistance from these two governments was also covered.

Secretary of Defense Gates, Acting-Secretary of State Dillon and the Atomic Energy Commissions' McCone discuss nuclear sharing with France. The French had offered full cooperation and participation in NATO in return for US Polaris submarine-launched missiles (without warhead).

Secretary of Defense McNamara and his Deputy Gilpatric discuss whether assisting the French with missile technology would advance their nuclear weapons program. They speculate that it will help indirectly, missile aid would reduce the cost of the French missile research program and those saving could be directed to warhead production.

Instructions for Roswell Gilpatric and Paul Nitze from Secretary of State Rusk for negotiations with the French. Among the topics which the US representatives should not discuss are missile sharing and a common Western nuclear force.