NATO Expansion To Russian Borders Unacceptable: Lavrov

[Purveyor]

6. Some disagree but it is not without surprise the west would renege on the intent.

Jack Matlock, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union during its final years, said that the West gave a "clear commitment" not to expand, and declassified documents indicate that Soviet negotiators were given the impression that NATO membership was off the table for countries such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or Poland.[7]

In 1996, Gorbachev wrote in his Memoirs, that "during the negotiations on the unification of Germany they gave assurances that NATO would not extend its zone of operation to the east,"[8] and repeated this view in an interview in 2008.[9]

According to Robert Zoellick, a State Department official involved in the Two Plus Four negotiating process, this appears to be a misperception, and no formal commitment regarding enlargement was made.[10]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO