Political Committee

Corporate body

Political Committee

1957

The AC/119 chronological series contains the records of the Political Committee. Established by the North Atlantic Council in January 1957 (C-M(57)3), pursuant to the recommendation of the Committee of Three(1), this committee is made up of a representative of each delegation, accompanied by experts from his or her country as required. It is chaired by the Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs. The Political Committee is responsible for carrying out all of the studies and preparatory work to assist the Council and the Secretary General in fulfilling their political consultation responsibilities. It inherited tasks that had been previously assigned to the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy(2). The Political Committee(3) met for the first time on 29 January 1957. In order to fulfil its wide-ranging mission, it was decided to set up subgroups of regional experts in order to address specific issues and provide a broad outline of the situation in each part of the world. Beginning in 1957, groups of regional experts reporting to the Political Committee began to operate. These were: - the Working Group on Trends of Soviet Policy, which took over from the former AC/34 working group; - the Group of Experts on the Satellite Countries, whose first report was issued in March 1957; - the Group of Middle East Experts, which met for the first time in March 1957; - the Group of Far East Experts, whose first meeting was held in November 1958; - the Working Group on Latin America, set up in 1961; - the Working Group on Africa, the only group whose documents had their own reference number (AC/146), which was abandoned in 1961. In 1967 the Council broadened the terms of reference of the Political Committee, after which point disarmament experts would meet under its auspices at regular intervals.The Political Committee is a standing committee which still sits today.

AC/119