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Treaties with Russia contained no pledge NATO would not expand — German Foreign Ministry

Earlier, it was reported that there were documents unearthedi ndicating that verbal promises to the Soviet Union there would be no expansion to the east did exist in reality

BERLIN, February 21. /TASS/. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Christopher Burger has said that none of the basic treaties with Russia contained any promises NATO would not expand to the east.

"I would like to stress that neither the Two Plus Four treaty nor the Russia-NATO Founding Act contained any promise to Russia NATO will not expand eastwards," he said.

Earlier, Der Spiegel magazine cited archive documents unearthed by US political scientist Joshua Shifrinson, of Boson University indicating that verbal promises to the Soviet Union there would be no expansion to the east did exist in reality.

At first, the document was classified. It concerns a meeting of US, British, French, and German foreign ministers in Bonn on March 6, 1991.

"We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations [by the GDR, the FRG, France, the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States] that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe. We could not, therefore, offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others," the FRG representative, Jurgen Chrobog, said according to the document.

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